On the Shortness of Life

Seneca wrote On the Shortness of Life 2,000 years ago... It's shorter than my book as well... He gets a lot wrong, especially about the role of death and the role of the shortness of life.

when Seneca writes his work on the shortness of life, famous stoic as we know,

He has a book called On the Shortness of Life, where it's all about the common human misconception that life is too short, where Seneca says that it's not that we weren't given enough time to live, it's that we waste so much of it.

Today's entry is a quote from Seneca on his essay on the Shortness of Life, which is one of my all-time favorite quotes from Seneca.

We like to say that we don't get to choose our parents, that they were given to us by chance.

Yet we can truly choose whose children we would like to be.

I just love that quote so much because to me, that's what I've done in my life. I've picked who my ancestors are, who my parents are. I'll get into more of that in a minute.

Seneca knew this. That's why he wrote his famous essay on the shortness of life.

It's not that life is short, he writes. It's that we waste a lot of it.

We watch our money, we protect our property, yet we fritter away the most valuable of our resources, the most finite of them, the one thing we can never get back that they aren't making anymore of.

The time that passes Seneca writes belongs to death. It's gone forever, never to return.

Once a dawn happens, it is gone to you forever. Once a day ends, it's done for you for all time.

it isn't that life is short although it can feel that way it's that we waste a lot of it

life is long if you know how to use it

if you read James Rom's book dying every day I'm gonna give it to you in the bookstore it's incredible he writes this biography it's called dying every day Senica in the court of Nero and um he goes this is how this is how good a Senica is as a writer um for most of history we did not know that Senica the playwright and Senica the philosopher were the same person because they're both so good and so different it seemed inconceivable that Rom's greatest philosopher could also be at Rom's greatest philosopher and most powerful political broker could also be its greatest playwright

It's not that life is short, it's that we waste a lot of it.

Life is long enough and it's given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well but when it's poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when it's employed to no good end. We're finally driven to see that it is passed by without us even recognizing its passing.

It is not that we all have too short a time to live...we squander a great deal of it.

Believe me, Seneca says in on the shortness of life, it's better to produce the balance sheet of your own life than that of the grain market.

It's about understanding the balance sheet of one's life as Sena was saying.

And it's just another sort of deeply powerful, powerful question from Sennaka as the Stoics tell us always come an expert in the things that matter, focus on the things that matter.

The deified Augusta, as Seneca writes in on the shortness of life, which you must read, to whom the gods granted more than to anyone else never ceased to pray for rest and to seek a respite from public affairs.

Life is long if you know how to use it

I do read novels people think I only read nonfiction but my wife recommended sorrow and bliss which is this beautiful novel about depression surprisingly funny I read as well I was traveling I like that um I read Susan Cain's new book I love her book Quiet about introverts as an introvert myself her new book bitter sweet about sort of the melancholy side of life because I was speaking at the Naval Academy I was very excited that Admiral Steph Riddis sent me a galley of his new book about Navy Adenrals and captains who took huge risks there's a lot of great stories in here and I read this on my way to the Naval Academy while I was in Big Bend I read this new book from Steve Rinella about how to raise outdoor kids in inside worlds obviously I'm bookish obviously I spend a lot of time front of screens but I also live in the country I also love the outdoors and how do you raise a kid that appreciates that and understands the beauty of the outdoors anyways this is a great book I really liked it I interviewed him for the podcast as I was saying I read the mayor of Castro Street biography of part of New Milk the think of Stokes as apathetic or passive accepting the status quo in fact they change things they make the world better so I'm as I'm starting to think and research for the next book in the series about justice I'm looking for people who who were pioneers who made changes you brought new awareness of things and this biography was fascinating some stuff to do some stuff not to do but overall a great book we got to read it and then this one was highly recommended to me it's about Gandhi but not Gandhi in India I'm reading that one next but this is Gandhi the activist in South Africa he went to school in London then immigrated to the colony of South Africa where he suddenly faced all this scene and you're really similar to what would later happen in America sort of Jim Crow S.K. Laws so I don't know this is probably two three thousand pages worth of books but when you treat reading like a job and you take it seriously you can get a lot done and in a normal month I'm at home more so I it's actually harder for me to read because I was traveling so much time and airplanes try not to watch tv or movies I try not to space out I don't need I just sit and I read on the airplane I get a lot done and this is a great reading for me but I think of the main lessons of this month I think there's a couple a big one is of course it's easy to over commit and be too busy right when I look at the calendar and when I was starting to get stressed my wife and I laid the calendar down we wrote everything out that we had to do for the month and it was too much it's a calibration as the world kind of adjusts and we embrace like whatever this phase of the pandemic is I agree to more that I wanted and so I emailed my speaking agency and I said this is as busy as I would ever want to be this is the line can't go past it so that's important from a like work-life balance standpoint but also professionally by drawing the line by creating scarcity here's what I'm willing to do here's what I'm not willing to do here's how many slots there are you'll soon increase value so saying no to me is the big lesson momentum worry that life is short you can't take people for granted you have to be with them while you can be with them and this is something I remind myself of every night when I touch my kids in the bed I'm not rushing through this I'm not rushing to try to get them to sleep I'm not saying no I'm not gonna read you one more book because what are my rushing towards Netflix you know email none of that stuff matters but I'm also rushing away from one of however many nights I get with my kids I'm rushing away from them as three-year-olds and five-year-olds I'm rushing away from this moment and I don't want to do that I want to be in this moment presents to me is an important lesson and you just have to practice it and actually it's funny one of the things we we rolled out for daily stoke this month is this momentum worry calendar this your life is made up of roughly four thousand weeks this month was you know four weeks how did I spend those four weeks did I live those four weeks Sena says death isn't something in the future death is happening now yes my grandmother died now but she died slowly over eighty five years she actually exceeded the four thousand weeks on the chart which is great that's wonderful but what do you have to show for those weeks and she had a wonderful life but you know if I was just on autopilot this month or today or this minute I'm rejecting that gift I'm not being present I'm taking life for granted and then you know I have tattooed on my wrist here and I talked about it in a couple of different talks I gave it when I think of all the moments that I'm happiest that I did my best work you know I wasn't doing 50 things at one time I was connected I was present I tuned things out the stokes talk about adoraxia right not being disturbed by internal or external forces but I think the idea is like you don't control what's happening in the world you don't control necessarily how busy your month is or all the things that could go wrong so you have to find a way to be still and content and focused in the midst of that there's a letter from Sena Corrie's in Rome trying to write and there's crazy noises going on and someone's getting arrested and you know the rooms too hot you you have to be able to tune all that out and focus especially as a writer in this digital world where there's alerts and interruptions and attempting can you focus amidst the crates can you be still as the world is spinning faster and faster around you because if you can't not only you're not going to perform at a good level you're going to miss all the wonderful moments you're going to miss the sunset you're going to miss the dinner with people that you care about you're going to miss the sweetness of that bedtime you're going to miss all the little things that Marcus really observes you know grains of wheat bending under their own weight or you know the furrow of an animal's brow or the way that bread splits open you're going to miss the ordinary extraordinary ness of life and so when I think about this month I think about the time that I spent with my kids I think about the progress that I made on my book I think about the runs that I took on the beach and all of that to me made it a wonderful month I hope you like this video I hope you subscribe but what I really want you to subscribe to is our daily stoic email one bit of stoic wisdom totally for free to the largest community of stoics ever in existence you can sign up at daily stoic.com slash email there's no spam you can unsubscribe at anytime I love sending it I've sent it every day for the last six years and I hope to see you there at daily stoic.com slash email you can listen to the daily stoic early and add free on amazon music download the amazon music app today or you can listen early and add free with wonder plus in apple podcasts. The early 2000s was a breeding ground for bad reality competition series from shows like kid nation CBS is weird lord of the flies style social experiment that took 40 kids to live by themselves in a ghost town to the swan a horrifying concept where women spent months undergoing a physical transformation and then were made to compete in a beauty pageant hi i'm micha brown and i'm the host of wonderry's podcast the big flop each episode comedians join me to chronicle one of the biggest pop culture fails of all time and try to answer the age old question who thought this was a good idea recently on the big flop we looked at the reality TV show the swan the problem this dream opportunity quickly became a viewing nightmare they were isolated for weeks berated operated on and then were ranked by a panel of judges follow the big flop on the wonderry app or wherever you get your podcasts

on the shortness of life one of my favorite little collections of seneca's writings but we'll get to the quote now he says no one is crushed by fortune unless they are first deceived by her those who aren't pompous in good times don't have their bubbles burst with change against either circumstance

if you haven't read on the shortness of life pick up the copy there and the pain of porch if you could all I'll link to it in today's episode

there's another short penguin one called on the shortness of life and it's a collection of essays from Seneca I think it's called the penguin grade ideas series which is very good

Penguin has a little translation called On the Shortness of Life, which has not just that title, it has Consolation to Helvia...and On Tranquility of Mind. This one's awesome.

Seneca says we're all the geniuses of history to focus on a single theme that could never fully express their bafflement to darkness, to human mind. No person would give even an inch of their estate and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay. Yet we easily let others encroach on our lives worse. We often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person would hand out their money to a passerby but how many of us, but how many of us hand out our lives. We're tight-fisted with our property and money. Yet we think too little of wasting time, the one thing we should all be the toughest risers about that's Seneca on the shortness of life.

It's not that we all have too short a time to live. Seneca says that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough and it's given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But when it's poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when it's employed to no good end, we're finally driven to see that it is passed by without us even recognizing it's passing. So it is we don't receive short life. We make it so. Or as I've also heard it rendered by Seneca, it's not that life is short. It's that we waste a lot of it.

It's a very powerful essay. It's worth rereading a couple times a year to be quite frank.

you will hear many people saying when I am 50 I shall retire into leisure. When I am 60 I shall give up public duties.

And what guarantee do you have of a longer life?

Who will allow your course to proceed as you arrange it?

Aren't you ashamed to keep for yourself just the remnants of your life and to devote to wisdom only that time which cannot be spent on any business?

How late it is to begin to live only when life must end?