Big Idea Daily | On the Shortness of Life
 |
Life Is Long If You Know How to Use Itby Seneca |
“But if each of us could have the tally of his future years set before him, as we can of our past years, how alarmed would be those who saw only a few years ahead, and how carefully would they use them!”SENECA |
BIG IDEA
Seneca says: “Today’s the Day!!”
FROM THE BOOK“Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight?
They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. 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. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately. Listen to the cry of our greatest poet, who as though inspired with divine utterance sings salutary verses:
Life’s finest day for wretched mortals here
Is always first to flee.
‘Why do you linger?’ he means. ‘Why are you idle? If you don’t grasp it first, it flees.’ And even if you do grasp it, it will still flee. So you must match time’s swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow. In chastising endless delay, too, the poet very elegantly speaks not of the ‘finest age’ but ‘finest day.’ However greedy you are, why are you so unconcerned and so sluggish (while time flies so fast), extending months and years in a long sequence ahead of you? The poet is telling you about the day — and about this very day that is escaping. So can it be doubted that for wretched mortals — that is, the preoccupied — the finest day is always the first to flee?”
|
Brian's Notes
That’s from the essay from which the book got its title: “Life Is Short for Those Who Don’t Know How to Use It.”
If you’re wasting your time getting ready to live or frittering your time away on useless preoccupations life will appear very short.
But not if you live with a sense of perspective on just how few days you have left.
“You must match time’s swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow.”
In other words, you must live with a sense of (grounded) URGENCY!!
As we discuss in Masterpiece Days 101, TODAY IS THE DAY.
It’s our finest day and always the first to flee.
Let’s drink swiftly and make today amazing.
Big Ideas
01: “TODAY’S THE DAY!”
02: BEEN EXILED LATELY?
03: THE WISE PERSON
04: FLEXIBILITY --> TRANQUILITY
05: OUR MINDS MUST RELAX
“Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.”SENECA |
Get all 700+ notesĀ and 101 masterclasses.
Master the Big Ideas from the best books in under 20 minutes a day for one lifetime payment of $99.
