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Seneca on the proper use of time

reasonandmeaning.com

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Re: Seneca on the proper use of time

#2

Post by 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

Re: Seneca on the proper use of time

#3

Post by 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.

Re: Seneca on the proper use of time

#5

Post by bcoughlan »

Mz wrote: post #3

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 dismis…

> But it both implores you to spend your time on that which is important and also dismisses having material ambition.

The sentence you quoted struck me also, but I don't see it as dismissing ambition of any kind. I once had the mentality of accepting being miserable and rationalizing it for future rewards. I forgot to appreciate and enjoy what I have, and thus my happiness forever resided in the future. But a person can have happiness in the present while still working for the future.

Re: Seneca on the proper use of time

#6

Post by 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.

Re: Seneca on the proper use of time

#9

Post by guelo »

snikeris wrote: post #8

Time is an illusory phenomenon that arises due to memory.

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.

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