On the Shortness of Life 摘抄

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On the Shortness of Life
Seneca
c.5 BC - AD 65
Transltated by C.D.N.Costa

P7.
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.

So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it. Just as when ample and princely wealth falls to a bad owner it is squandered in a moment, but wealth however modest, if entrusted to a good custodian, increases with use, so our lifetime extends amply if you manage it properly.

Life is long if you know how to use it.

'It is a small part of life we really live.' Indeed, all the rest is not life but merely time.

P9
You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don't notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply - though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last.

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end!

P11
There are many instructors in the other arts to be found everywhere: indeed, some of these arts mere boys have grasped so thoroughly that they can even teach them. But learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.

P12
But the man who spends all his time on his own needs, who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day. For what new pleasures can any hour now bring him? He has tried everything, and enjoyed everything to repletion.

Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man who is already full and satisfied food which he does not want but can hold.

So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbour, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage of opposing winds? He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about.

P13
Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course.

They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours.

The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

So you must match time's swiftness with your speed in using it.

Just as travellers are beguiled by conversation or reading or some profound meditation, and find they have arrived at their destination before they knew they were approaching it; so it is with this unceasing and extremely fast-moving journey of life, which waking or sleeping we make at the same pace - the preoccupied become aware of it only when it is over.

P14
Life is divided into three periods, past, present and future. Of these, the present is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. For this last is the one over which Fortune has lost her power, which cannot be brought back to anyone's control.

and just as it is no use pouring any amount of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch and hold it, so it does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind.

P16
For example, nobody will dipute that those people are busy about nothing who spend their time on useless literary studies:... which if you keep them to yourself in no way enhance your private knowledge, and if you publish them make you appear more a bore than a scholar.

P19
But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.

Yet the time of the actual enjoyment is short and swift, and made much shorter through their own fault. For they dash from one pleasure to another and cannot stay steady in one desire. Their days are not long but odious...... They lose the day in waiting for the night, and the night in fearing the dawn.

P20
To preserve prosperity we need other prosperity, and to support the prayers which have turned out well we have to make other prayers. Whatever comes our way by chance is unsteady, and the higher it rises the more liable it is to fall.

P22
Now while the blood is hot you should make your way with vigour to better things. In this kind of life you will find much that is worth your study: the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulmess of the passions, the knowledge of how to live and ide, and a life of deep tranquillity.

So when you see a man repeatedly wearing the robe of office, or one whose name is often spoken in the Forum, do not envy him: these things are won at the cost of life.

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Notes:

I got to know this book because it was among those many books that Tom Hiddleston once recommended. I believe in his taste so I decided to give this small book (or Essay actually) a try. 

Then I read and re-read it and find it pretty good. It does not discuss that much about how to live a long life, but it does tell us a lot about how people are wasting the valuable time and life without realizing it and point out that life is long if you know how to use it.

18 April, 2016