
Seneca on the proper use of time - antman
http://reasonandmeaning.com/2015/03/04/seneca-on-the-proper-use-of-time/
======
whysonot
Reminds me of the popular Steve Jobs quote about death and decision-making:

> Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever
> encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost
> everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment
> or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving what is
> truly important

The Dalai Lama too:

> Half of our lives we spend asleep. The first ten years we are merely
> children, and after twenty we begin to grow old. Meanwhile, our time is
> taken up with suffering, anxiety, fighting, sickness, and so forth, all of
> which limit our ability to practice

~~~
NhanH
It's interesting that the Dalai Lama stated "after twenty we begin to grow
old" \-- for the majority of us, that seems to be when life barely begins
itself.

~~~
bhrgunatha
Perhaps he's being more literal and he means (roughly) peak physical maturity.
Although I've read different estimates - I seem to remember people mention
somewhere in the 20s for when your body has completed it's full physical
growth cycle.

------
Mz
I rather like this line:

 _You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies
in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole
future lies in uncertainty: live immediately._

A lot of the rest seems like self-contradictory mumbo jumbo -- which may just
mean that I don't understand it. But it both implores you to spend your time
on that which is important and also dismisses having material ambition. There
are good points to such ideas, but, bereft of context, it really tells me
nothing.

Since we are just dancing on this earth for a short time, what is wrong with
taking some time to enjoy life, to smell the roses? If we prefer that to
seeking great accomplishments and we are all just dust in the wind, we can
decide which we prefer, can we not?

(Edit: And now my own comment doesn't make sense, because I can't make sense
of what Seneca wrote. What "great accomplishments" does he value? He seems to
simultaneously implore people to be ambitious workaholics and lambaste them
for the same.)

Edit #2: If it makes any difference to how people interpret my above remarks:
I spent about a year at death's door. I am nearly 50 years old and have a
condition with a life-expectancy in the 30's. I have been living under
sentence of death a long time. If you don't enjoy life at least a little here
and there, if it is nothing but unremitting misery, seriously, give me death.

~~~
Frondo
Elsewhere in Seneca's writing, it's a bit clearer what he means:

Pursue wisdom. Learn not just for learning's sake, but so that you can elevate
mankind just a little higher by having lived.

~~~
Mz
Thank you.

Perhaps a mistake to say it, but, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it's
all just a simulation in 4d anyway. At some point, the universe implodes back
upon itself and everything will be gone. So, ultimately, it kind of doesn't
actually matter one way or the other.

Which means we can kind of do what we want, decide what we most value, if we
so choose.

I do the things I do because a) "Everyone needs a vocation" (if you have read
the play _The importance of being Earnest_ , you might understand that to mean
"We all have to keep ourselves occupied somehow between now and the time we
die", which is how I mean it) and b) while I see no particular moral
imperative to "elevate mankind," it's fun to work on solving hard problems and
work on opening up opportunities that can't exist without that "elevation."
More complex things emerge from less complex underpinnings and then things can
get interesting.

I have to be here anyway (unless I commit suicide). Might as well spend that
time doing interesting things that I feel okay about. Because while my body is
dust in the wind and, someday, even this solar system will no doubt be dust in
some galactic wind, my quality of life -- my experience of it -- matters to
me. And a lot of that stuff that people call "wisdom" or "virtue" has a proven
track record of improving my own contentment.

/talking in public before lunch, usually a mistake

------
mikro2nd
Aside from the obvious benefits of this perspective to bring clarity in
deciding what you work on each day, each week, each hour, it also brings to me
a strong sense of respect for other peoples' time.

I strive, for this very reason, to always be on time for meetings. If I say
I'll see you at the coffee shop at 10:30, I'll be there at or before 10:30,
barring any unanticipatable derailments. It doesn't pay to get obsessive about
it, but such time consciousness fosters a respect for the other person's
death. A good way to piss me off is to be persistently careless with meeting
times; you're showing a marked disrespect for my time/death. And your own.

Being aware of death also helps me maintain quality, precision and focus when
dealing with groups of people: I was always very aware of "other peoples'
time" when addressing groups (sometimes large groups) of people in the forms
of teaching and speaking at conferences. The awareness that, for each second
of _my_ time "spent", I am being granted the amazing gift of tens, hundreds or
even thousands of seconds of everybody else's time. To me a humbling thought
that always helped me get my own damn ego out of the way and focus on adding
quality/value to the content of whatever I was trying to deliver.

------
Yhippa
The stuff about mentorship is gold. I wish there were efficient ways to
connect mentors and mentees. The last chance I had to have a mentor was at a
big corporation but the focus seemed to be heavily favored towards being
successful at that company, not the career I wanted. I didn't have a good way
of finding a mentor so I took what was available to me which was still
helpful.

Sometimes I feel that the Internet can be a mentor of sorts. There is a whole
source of blogs and advice out there. Maybe that could be a substitute if you
don't have the connections to find a mentor. The most difficult thing about
that by far is separating the wheat from the chaff.

------
hownottowrite
When this topic comes up, I always recommend Man's Search for Meaning by
Viktor Frankl: [http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-
Frankl/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-
Frankl/dp/080701429X)

------
doctorstupid
Seneca warns against the perils of indulging in heedless luxury, and yet
according to Dio, he at one point ordered “five hundred tables of citrus wood
with legs of ivory, all identically alike, and he served banquets on them.”

------
michaelsbradley
Good stuff! It made me recall one of my favorite sermons from St. Josemaría
Escrivá:

 _Time is a Treasure_

[http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/friends_of_god-
chapter-3.ht...](http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/friends_of_god-
chapter-3.htm)

------
snikeris
Time is an illusory phenomenon that arises due to memory.

~~~
guelo
So that leads to, if we could inject memories we could live more than a
lifetime's worth. Or maybe accessing others' memories via stories, (reading,
movies, etc.) adds to our store of memories and makes our lives richer.

But this is assuming that having the most memories at the end is the goal of
life. But your memories are also gone when you die.

The only thing that remains after you die are memories in others' minds about
you. The bigger your achievements the longer the memories about you will last
in the collective mind. Maybe that's a better life goal.

~~~
meric
I find I enjoy learning more than knowing. I would think voluntarily to become
a like a child and learn again might be enjoyable. Your mind is a memory
basket whose purpose is to experience life. Is it more useful at this purpose
being full, or empty?

