The Shortness of Life
It is said, in the quite melancholy work by Seneca called “On the Shortness of Life”, that we complain of nature and often fail to find life in time. He says “it is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest if the whole of it is well invested”. Let’s try to focus on this idea, as well as the concept of life’s shortness.
When we think of a life well-lived, we do not only think of the wealth and connections cultivated towards one’s betterment — we may also be interested in the depth, the emotional quality of the experiences we’ve had, and whether they felt complete. We are missing out on the best possible life because of the unhappy thoughts and empty preoccupations we’ve gotten so acclimated to. Seneca is critical of the many temptations consuming humanity, particularly when he writes “vices beset us and surround us on every side, and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes to the discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust”. We are thereby shown that vices limit our ability to live, and this conception of a shortness of life is in our control. A good life would surely not feel short, and it would most definitely not feel like we are kept down and chained to something. We need to live a life that could resist vice.
To elaborate more on this point, I think it’s wise to contemplate our own thoughts and how they affect our lives. The nature of our path is rooted in difficulties, and some of those are induced by our own circular patterns of reasoning. The fear of death, for example, is completely irrational, given that it is not something we can control. The cause and effect of certain events, particularly those which we are part of, may feel like a strange dreamlike affair, since we are simply witnessing it happen — this too must be accepted. Once we are able to rule out what we cannot control, we are able to move on to what can be, and this at least begins a realistic process of growth. Seneca writes “there is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing that is harder to learn”. I find that it is very difficult to focus particularly on living because we are constantly in contention with our mental expectations. If we could simply let go of anxious thoughts, perhaps we may be able to live for the first time.
Seneca clearly understood the value of individuality and seizing life into one’s own hands, for he said “The condition of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labour at preoccupations that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world — loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.” He is clear about the emptiness of a life that is not lived for itself, and such a life is often prone to intemperance and reckless decisions, vice and self-indulgence. One cannot be happy if they don’t align with their lives!
We must understand that much of what is being discussed here is not easy to accept, especially given that there has been such unprecedented change in the psyches of people over the past several generations. Life is not ultimately short, I think, but we shorten it by wasting time and preoccupying ourselves with meaningless things. There is great wisdom in the philosophers of the past, for they saw virtue much more clearly than we do now. They saw people idling, people acting intemperately, people debasing one another, and they immediately saw the root problem, which I would call “attacking nature”. If we are not happy with the manner in which reality has been constructed, we will ultimately be unhappy with ourselves, no matter what we try. And therefore, the only thing we can do is focus on living a better life.
Thank you.
