你听不听新闻联播？
这篇书评可能有关键情节透露
#碎碎念#每天日出日落，人群熙熙攘攘，我们就像分子一样散落在城市中的各个角落。阅读2000年前的智者书写关于时间，关于人生的文字，时空变成跳跃的窗口。脑中穿插进“死亡诗社”中，Kitting指点挂在墙壁上历届毕业生，曾经的意气风发，现已灰飞烟灭。如何更好的度过短暂的人生，少一点遗憾，少一点痛苦，说到底，道理不过一二啊！
我读Seneca的第一本书（3封信），除了被文字感动以外，我也为他感到不平。我不相信这样一个智者会因为“贪污”而被世代诟病。我是一个坚定的性本恶的信奉者，不信，首先不是我完全相信他对自己的描述（有机会贪污是绝大部分人“正常”的选择），而是通过他给朋友，特别是母亲，他深深地认为财富只会给人带来痛苦。我选择相信“敬畏”的表述，而不是“看破”的表白；其次，所有的罪过是尼禄加给他的，历史从来都是统治阶级的记录，我毫无迟疑选择相信智者对于“Jealousy"的皈依。
The great Roman philosopher, statesman, dramatist Seneca ( BC 4 – AD 64) wrote many letters encouraging friends to apply themselves to the task of living a free, wise, tranquil and joyful life. ‘On the Shortness of Life’ is one of my personal favorites since Seneca, ever the true eclectic, brilliantly draws from the various streams of ancient wisdom: Stoic, Epicurean, Platonic, Skeptic, and Cynic, as he addresses some of the most important questions we face as humans. Below are several quotes along with my comments.
On the Shortage of Life - To Paulinus
1. No one will bring back the years, no one will restore you to yourself. Life we follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king’s commend or a people’s favor. As it started out on it first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. - Death is inevitable, the clocking is kicking but with no commotion. It is only valued while we set used of it.
2. But the man who spends all his time on his own needs, who organizes every day as thought 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. For the rest, Fortune can dispose as she likes: his life is now secure. - Live toward our death!
3. Therefore it is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasure and preoccupations, it starts up again and from its very respite gains force to savage us. But the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed forever. - Face our fear with our courage. We will die at end, so die bravely.
Consolation to Helvia - To Helvia
On Tranquillity of Mind
1. They are all in the same category, both those who are afflicted with fickleness, boredom and a ceaseless change of purpose, and who always yearn for what they have left behind, and those who just yawn from apathy. There are those too who toss around like insomniacs, and keep changing their position until they find rest through sheer weariness. They keep altering the condition of their lives, and eventually stick to that one in which they are trapped not by weariness with further change but by old age which is too sluggish for novelty. There are those too who suffer not from moral steadfastness but from inertia, and so lack the fickleness to live as they wish, and just live as they have begun. In fact there are innumerable characteristics of the malady, but one effect – dissatisfaction with oneself. This arises from mental instability and from fearful and unfulfilled desires, when men do not dare or do not achieve all they long for, and all they grasp at is hope. - Seneca tells all truth. we run, flee away the "uncertainty", from our dream to becoming better self, by taking real action. But we are all sorry for the result of unsaitsfaction with ourself.
2. Curius Dentatus used to say that he preferred real death to living death; for the ultimate horror is to leave the number of the living before you die. - Real Death vs Living Death, it is our choice.
