Often times we are told that life is too short. But is it really? Is life really too short or are we just living it wrong? In this article I will look at Seneca’s book On the Shortness of Life, discussing how he views we shorten our own lives and how we can truly live a life that feels long and fulfilled if we learn to live right.
One of the biggest struggles that many of us can have when we enter into recovery is that we look back at what we view is all that time that was wasted in our addiction. We begin to feel a sadness, regret or guilt over all the things we could have done if we were not wasting our time caught in addiction. But the reality is that we are in a world surrounded with people wasting their time, it is not just an issue that addicts suffer from. It can be seen through the popularity of the phrase “life is too short” and people desperate for more time as they get older.
On the Shortness of Life was an essay that the Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote to his father-in-law in an effort to enlighten him on how to make the most out of life. In this article I will give a brief summary on each chapter so that you can see how they build up an argument of the traps we fall into in life to make it seem like our lives are not long enough. Then you can use this knowledge to make changes in your life to make it feel full and fulfilled.
1. Most people, even the greatest minds in history, feel as if life is too short and there is just not enough time to achieve. However, our life is perfectly long enough for a person that knows how to use it right.
2. People waste their life in different ways. It can be wasted by: drugs or alcohol, working all the time, stuck in greed and always wanting more, laziness, lust, or even being consumed with arguments and rage. It isn’t just addiction that destroys lives but so many other things as well.
3. We are so worried about people stealing property from us but we let them steal our time. We use so much of our time doing things for others or pleasing others. Make sure that you treat your time as something precious when you give it to another person.
4. We work hard all our lives thinking that retirement will be when we finally get the chance to live and that is us assuming we will live to that age with enough time after. But why work forty or more years to give only a few to finally living?
5. Every one of us has the ability to take power over their own life and begin to live.
6. We complain and complain about our lives and the things we wish we can do with them but we do nothing about it.
7. We think that being rich and powerful means you get to have a fulfilling life. But these people have problems of their own as they have to try to keep their wealth, run their business and deal with workers. Being the boss doesn’t give you automatically the freedom to live.
8. We treat time as if it has no value and freely give it away to people that demand it from us as if we are giving them nothing. Time is your most precious possession because you can never get it back.
9.Some day I want to do this. Some day I want to learn this. We have lives filled with some day I will…always pushing things to a future that may never come. What can you do today to work towards those some days?
10. The moment right now is the only time that we exist in. But many of us get buried in a past that haunts us and consumes our lives. The past is gone and we need to leave it there so we can exist in the moment we have right now.
11. Your goal is to not be that old person on their death bed wishing they would have lived and done all those some day I wills.
12. Wealthy people waste time worrying about how perfect their car is, if the art work in the house good, is the party they are going to throw impressive. Having money does not free you…you can create new useless things to worry about.
13. We waste so much time learning useless things that add no value to life and spend so much time over useless arguments. Think of what many people do on social media.
14. If you want to live a better life, you have the wisdom of the past at your fingertips. Learn from the great minds that lived in the past to the present to help guide you.
15. Then it is your choice to follow the path of the wise to live a better life.
16. Truly think about all the time that you do nothing. The time you throw away. Do not complain that life is too short if you are throwing it away all the time by wasting time doing nothing.
17. There is nothing wrong with gaining wealth as long as you have good foundations within you, but without this you will find no release through success.
18. And yes it is good to be doing good things in life to help others but do not do this at the cost of you having your chance to live.
19. You need to take time to discover what the meaning of life is for you and become satisfied with what happens to you after death. You need to solve these things for yourself to feel your life is enough and you are fine when it comes to an end.
20. Do not be that person that just spends their whole life working till they are old and on their death bed. Because no matter what you gain materially in this world you can not bring it with you.
I hope that you were able to find insight through these words and ways in which you can apply them to your own life so that you can start living a life that is full and not one that is too short. I definitely recommend for those interested to read the full book to gain further insight into each chapter.
Good luck and good living.
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Derek Castleman: The Sober Stoic 