Chapter 9 - On the Shortness of Life, by Seneca the Younger
Today, we continue reading On the Shortness of Life, by Seneca the Younger.
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Transcript
Is there anything more ridiculous than a person talking with certitude about the future? Such people devote their energy on creating a better life for themselves – spending their life preparing for life!
They are motivated by thoughts of a distant tomorrow; but postponing life is the greatest waste of time; it deprives them of each new day life brings, it steals from the present with the promise of the hereafter.
The greatest obstacle to living a full life is having expectations, delaying gratification based on what might happen tomorrow which squanders today.
Where do you focus? At what point do you aim?
Everything that is to come is steeped in uncertainty; live now!
Behold how the greatest of poets laments, and, as if inspired by the voice of the gods, sings the oh-so poignant strain:
The sunniest day in a miserable mortal’s life
Is always the first to fly.
“Why do you wait,” asks he. “Why are you idle? If you don’t seize the day, it escapes."
Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore you must compete with time’s haste in the speed of using it, and, like a gush of water that blasts past and will not always flow calmly, you must drink fast.
Pointedly, the specific word of the bard is most aptly chosen to cast disapproval on infinite delay, in that he says, not “the sunniest age,” but “the sunniest day.”
Dictated by greed, the ignorant stretch before themselves months and years in long array, not bothered about anything and living a lazy life despite knowing that time flies so fast.
The bard sings to you about seizing the day, that today is flying.
Is there, then, any doubt that for poor mortals who are too preoccupied, the sunniest day is always the first to flee?
Old age surprises them while their minds are still immature, and they come to it unready and defenseless, because they have not prepared for it; they have stumbled upon it suddenly and unexpectedly. They did not notice that it was drawing nearer day by day.
Even as chatting or reading or musing on some subject distracts the traveler, and he finds that he has reached the end of his journey before realizing that it was even coming up, so it is with this unceasing and ever speedy journey of life, which we progress through at the same pace whether awake or asleep.
Those who are too busy to notice life as it passes by them come to this realization only at the end.
