
Seneca on The Shortness of Time (2017) - prostoalex
https://fs.blog/2017/03/seneca-on-the-shortness-of-time/
======
lordleft
It was this essay, along with a choice quote from Epictetus, that induced me
to finally leave my day job to go back to University to study CS. I graduated
a month ago and began my first full-time SWE position last Monday.

I spent my twenties on auto-pilot, allowing external circumstances to
effectively decide my life for me. Seneca and the Stoics reminded me of the
immense agency I still possessed, despite the obscenity that was the recession
and the cost of American Higher Education. I still had some say over my life,
or at least over my choices, and if I didn't exercise my agency, life would
slip through my fingers and hurtle to me a deathbed filled with regret and
disappointment.

The quote from Epictetus:

"How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in
no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the
principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of
teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-
improvement to him? You are no longer a boy but a full-grown man. If you are
careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day
after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are
making no progress but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary. From
now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make
whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you
encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable or highly or lowly
regarded, remember that the contest is now, you are at the Olympic games, you
cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a
single day and a single event. This is how Socrates fulfilled himself by
attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you,
although you are not yet Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants
to be Socrates."

~~~
agumonkey
I found it shocking to realize that thousand years old realizations are still
worth more than the vast majority of ideas invented since (regarding human
existence that is).

Gives a slight taint to the meaning of the word 'progress'.

~~~
taberiand
That's the thing about philosophy - it doesn't take any special tools or rely
on modern technology to study, just intellect. People today aren't any more or
less sophisticated than the people of thousands of years ago, and them no more
than the people thousands of years before them. Philosophy transcends time and
space, and the golden age of Greek and Roman philosophy is full of extremely
insightful and applicable knowledge to our modern lives.

~~~
FabHK
> People today aren't any more or less sophisticated than the people of
> thousands of years ago, and them no more than the people thousands of years
> before them.

Well, yes and no. We certainly _know_ a lot more than people knew back then.
We know vastly more about the cosmos, we know about atoms, we know about
evolution, we know much about the brain.

We also face very different challenges than people millennia ago - we have
weapons of mass destruction, more obesity than famine (in developed
countries), social media, and so on.

Thus, I'd say only a small part of philosophy is still applicable and valuable
today. (For example, Seneca was a Stoic, and Stoicism had much to say about
physics and logic, which is pretty obsolete now, I'd say.)

There's a potential fallacy there, like thinking that old music was better,
when what we still hear today is just the very best of old music.

~~~
dsego
Funny how you mention the atoms, since the idea of atoms goes back to the
ancient greeks, they coined the term. Obviously they had no way to prove it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom#History_of_atomic_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom#History_of_atomic_theory)

~~~
FabHK
That's why I mentioned it - I cannot see in Democritus' theory anything but
idle speculation.

------
compumike
On a related note, if you don't make conscious and deliberate decisions about
how you want to spend your finite time -- i.e. if you are living "on
autopilot" as another commenter said -- the decisions will be made for you by
default, whether you like it or not.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future
beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and
another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and
another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and
Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and
Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions,
and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these
figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in
the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make
up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of
them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable
to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they
plopped to the ground at my feet.” ― Sylvia Plath

~~~
mariushn
Wonderful quote! How do you get more figs in the tree? As in, how to discover
possibilities you haven't thought of, and the tree has only 2-3 figs now, none
amazing?

~~~
K0SM0S
I think this could help.

1\. The point is not to "do what you love", but to "love what you do".

Trying to do what you love is destined to fail quickly: there's always
something else, there's always a part of the job you don't like, and you never
truly have control over the very fact that you love something or not, at least
not if you approach it like that — you'd be condemned to follow your emotions
as the only decision maker for your choices in life. But emotions are meant to
guide us (it's information, just the language of the body), not control us.

Loving what you do, however, is a totally different process, and quickly
becomes a choice as you flex that muscle: essentially it's about putting "good
will" into all your actions, it's about this idea that "how you do anything is
how you do everything"; to sincerely try with an open mind and being positive
about it. Several things follow from this simple practice, mindset:

\- we are creatures of habit, and the more we do something, usually the more
we like it. It's just how the brain is wired — that's how marketing works, by
sheer repetition, law of numbers. Propaganda and manipulation as well. "Self-
programming" yourself to be able, in time, to grow positive feelings about
_anything_ you have to do is really a sort of superpower in this day and age.

\- Here's an equation: effort + love = mastery (alternatively, you may see
grit + passion = skill, any variation like that). The message is clear: lots
of effort (time, regularity, repetition) and lots of love (but that part comes
from the doing, it's mechanical unless you resist it) is how we build
ourselves, and happiness among other things follows from that (because nobody
can take away such happiness from you, it's internal).

\- It seems that we all score differently on that scale, the term is
conscientiousness, but it is my belief that it can be trained by force of will
+ action, i.e. determination (to commit to do it, whether you are "motivated"
or not, regardless of emotions) + effort (marathon: paced, sustained,
repetition, long-term).

It takes about 20 days to break a habit, and 3 months to form a new one.
Probably about a year to make it last virtually forever, unless detrained.

These simple things have huge effects over the psyche (happiness notably) in
the long run. Massive compound effects.

2\. Another thing is the idea of "meaning", purpose, the "why" we do what we
do. As far as I'm concerned, this matter is solved: _you_ create meaning for
yourself. That's it. We all make a patchwork from bits and pieces from all
over the place, and it may appear of its own as a child or never for a
lifetime, but ultimately, it's a conscious act, a decision you make. Meaning
is the result of volition, internal drive to give substance to the world;
those who seek it externally may be amazed at others but probably feel empty
themselves until they become the creators of their own interpretation, their
own meaning. Purpose is what you say it is.

The short TL;DR is that if you picked up anything and worked diligently at it
for 10 years, you'd come out the other side an expert and loving it
(average/normal human response to that situation).

~~~
pmoriarty
_" the more we do something, usually the more we like it"_

That may be true for some, but for me the more I do something the less I like
it.

I need a lot of variety or I get bored and burnt out on whatever it is I'm
doing, no matter how much I used to like it when I first started.

In some cases an absence of years or even decades has not rekindled my
interest in what I used to love but overdid.

Doing something over and over and over again eventually kills my passion.

------
blinkingled
Yet the best hours of my life have been idle, empty ones with no plans or
agenda whatsoever.

This whole idea of filling time with 'work' like it is a race is completely
antithetical to any idea of joy and fulfilment.

It feels like 'wasting' time or downtime is essential to meaningful
productivity.

I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be. --
Peter Gibbons.

~~~
1996
Coasting through life is still being part of the rat race - except you run at
a lower pace.

The core issue remains: if you don't have a plan for your life, society will
make a plan for you.

By making your own destiny, you may fill part of your time with work, but only
as long as it serves your purpose.

How good is your idea of wasting time to get meaningful productivity, if you
are achieving someone else's goals instead of your own?

~~~
blinkingled
> How good is your idea of wasting time to get meaningful productivity, if you
> are achieving someone else's goals instead of your own?

That's a great point actually - the someone else's goals part. The whole
intelligence in service of madness thing stems from the fact that sane and
intelligent people sometimes do not have a goal of their own.

I definitely did not mean to imply that idling is the only thing you do with
your life - on the contrary I was trying to say idling is a great way of
knowing who you are and coming up with general goals for yourself that you can
then fulfill in the rest of the time.

The problem with busy life is you never really dream of your goals and are
constantly looking for things to do - it makes it almost eventual that you'll
be in service of others' goals. That's not always a bad thing but I find no
fulfillment in doing just that.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_The whole intelligence in service of madness thing stems from the fact that
sane and intelligent people sometimes do not have a goal of their own._

I have a suspicion that the majority only have a vague idea and they mostly
end up where they are by happenstance.

------
lawlorino
Am I the only one who doesn't find this kind of writing helpful? It just seems
to add to my increasing anxiety about throwing my life away by reminding me of
that fact but not presenting a path to solution. I think I can best summarise
my problem from the quote

> “A man who dares to waste an hour of time has not discovered the value of
> his life.”

The critical thing that I'm missing is how does one go about finding the value
of their life exactly?

------
acabal
Shameless plug, you can download a high quality ebook of his dialogues,
including "On the Shortness of Life," for free at Standard Ebooks:
[https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/seneca/dialogues/aubrey-
st...](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/seneca/dialogues/aubrey-stewart)

------
pmoriarty
Seneca's _Moral Letters_ [1] are also well worth reading, though they are as a
whole more hit and miss than _On the Shortness of Life_ which is excellent
throughout.

[1] -
[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius)

------
867-5309
"The very parent at the park playing on his iPhone while his children run
around playing and laughing is the same one, who, when you fast-forward the
axis of time, wants those precious moments back."

other brands are available..

~~~
atorodius
Antonomasia?

~~~
867-5309
product placement? elite luxury?

------
cryptozeus
Letters by seneca (free)

[http://www.openculture.com/2017/10/three-huge-volumes-of-
sto...](http://www.openculture.com/2017/10/three-huge-volumes-of-stoic-
writings-by-seneca-now-free-online-thanks-to-tim-ferriss.html)

------
jacobwilliamroy
I didn't realize Seneca was still writing as of 2017

~~~
dang
We'd change the year to that of his letter, but the bulk of the OP was not
written by Seneca.

------
lihaciudaniel
If you like to read more about Seneca, I can't recommend enough Tao Of Seneca
[1] by Tim Ferris. Other classical text that are must read include Enchiridion
by Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius Meditations

[1] [https://tim.blog/2017/07/06/tao-of-
seneca/](https://tim.blog/2017/07/06/tao-of-seneca/)

------
rnd33
One thing I can't shake, and it appears already in the second sentence of the
quoted letters by Seneca:

"Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure
to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is
well invested."

What are "great things" and what is the definition of a "well-invested life"?
Most of us will live rather unremarkable lives, most likely forgotten in a
hundred years or so (at best!). Who says a "good life" means being remembered
as long as possible by future humans? Who says the point of living is not to
live in luxury and carelessness?

It just seems to me that Seneca assumes the stoic world-view to be the norm.
Can anyone help me understand?

~~~
FooHentai
It's yours to define. If you consider it properly, and conclude that you would
choose your life to be luxury and carelessness, then it makes sense to start
steering things in that direction for yourself.

Some folks find satisfaction in raising then next generation. Others want a
statue of themselves somewhere that lasts for a few hundred years beyond their
own life. Some folks create, others are satisfied with minimal impact.

It's all personal, but considering it and then acting on it is the core idea.
Otherwise time carries on regardless and you get to the end to look back over
a pointless meandering. Which, if you consider that to be ok, is also fine.

------
dahart
> The best way to spend money is to buy time

I realized recently that I never fully understood ‘time is money’, never felt
it first-hand truly and deeply, until I tried to start my own business. Then I
‘discovered’ that money directly extended the amount of time I could chase my
dream and feed my family. Having a job never gave me the sense that I was
buying time, maybe because it’s not finite in the same way the startup is.

------
agumonkey
I was reminded that some things in adult life still distort the notion of
time. Climbing for instance got people to quote "turns a second in a century".
The amount of focus and depth for every little move makes your mind works
differently.

I think modern life kills this. Too many things are too comfortable and too
stressful (as in short burst of opposite stimuli).

------
gbacon
_So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have
any lack of it, but are wasteful of it._

