The Shortness of Life

Seneca, the Younger of course; the Elders are never interesting. And really, a blind manifestation of the dangers in being friends with madman. Something I remember daily and on watching politicians nothings and nothingnesses on vile television.

Seneca is a great friend to the idle, a patron of Russellian calibre. Still beyond, a lesson in the perils of suicide. He speaks the life to live and demonstrates the failure to die.

Wishing instead though to take lessons from his De Brevitate Vitae(On the Shortness of Life), and quoting from the Loeb edition text there appears some copyright. John W. Basore's obituary is unavailable and given his Loeb edition translation was in 1932, unless the poor man keeled right soon before or after publishing, our extended quotation-aries are not nicely legit. Still, it's not unheard of uncommon for our heroes to demise themselves astride upon their pearly gates of publishing glory.

In any case, the world speaks Latin so we might shall pretend the original sufficed. It would be nice still to purchase the Loeb itself. They are so very pretty... if very unfortunately dry. Or perhaps a Penguin issue. Look inside at Amazon.com.

On on to liberation:

The majority of mortals, Paulinus, complain bitterly of the spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, because even this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live. Nor is it merely the common herd and the unthinking crowd that bemoan what is, as men deem it, an universal ill; the same feeling has called forth complaint also from men who were famous.

A little some comfort then that it isn't just me but all my famous friends too. Later:

Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.

A bit sour attacking luxury and carelessness but then he is being worth hearing at least. We have the life is long enough theme okay. Let us hear more:

Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: "The part of life we really live is small." For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

Definitely not in the philosophy business to be making friends. I accept the hurtful truth... now gimme the answers I'm paying you for.

Think you that I am speaking of the wretches whose evils are admitted? Look at those whose prosperity men flock to behold; they are smothered by their blessings. To how many are riches a burden! From how many do eloquence and the daily straining to display their powers draw forth blood! How many are pale from constant pleasures! To how many does the throng of clients that crowd about them leave no freedom!

It's good to know the rich suffer. Perhaps not as much as the rest of us but no mind. I already knew the bad were never happy. Strike on with brave latinism:

Ask about the men whose names are known by heart, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them: A cultivates B and B cultivates C; no one is his own master. ... But can anyone have the hardihood to complain of the pride of another when he himself has no time to attend to himself? After all, no matter who you are, the great man does sometimes look toward you even if his face is insolent, he does sometimes condescend to listen to your words, he permits you to appear at his side; but you never deign to look upon yourself, to give ear to yourself. There is no reason, therefore, to count anyone in debt for such services, seeing that, when you performed them, you had no wish for another's company, but could not endure your own.

Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life—nay, they themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.

The early crux but it must suspect that Mr Seneca was not the most fun guy to be around. I can almost see him looking at his watch. See the first quotation in this Wheeler/Feynman story.

Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count. Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you;

Too few days indeed with my face wearing its natural expression. It's a permanent scowl. Although, anyone in public wears an awful scowl... try it... find someone or yourself alone in public and smiling. We are so unhappy when we forget to hide it from other people. Or it's like we don't find ourselves interested. And key is the "how many have robbed you of life" question. But it's fine on its own and everybody will agree the airline scourge on timewasters. Only do it and you are a miserable sod.

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. You will hear many men saying: "After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties." And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!

Yeah, well, a consideration of one's personal mortality is hardly my popular passtime. Necessary says Seneca unless you put off living until your chances of being alive are much smaller. His logic is sharp at this. And evil spot on for rubbishing the retirement mindset. Have fun when you are retired? Like hell... have fun now. Or I'll sleep when I am dead. Only I sleep now so I must already be dead. I gave up on that living stuff years ago.

You will see that the most powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in which they long for leisure, acclaim it, and prefer it to all their blessings. ... Marcus Cicero, long flung among men like Catiline and Clodius and Pompey and Crassus, some open enemies, others doubtful friends, as he is tossed to and fro along with the state and seeks to keep it from destruction, to be at last swept away, unable as he was to be restful in prosperity or patient in adversity—how many times does he curse that very consulship of his, which he had lauded without end, though not without reason!

Rotten consulships! Rotten success and rotten ambition!

When Livius Drusus, a bold and energetic man, ... It is a question whether he died by his own hand; for he fell from a sudden wound received in his groin, some doubting whether his death was voluntary, no one, whether it was timely.

How would anyone imagine a mortal wound inflicted on the groin could at all be voluntary? Nevertheless, must Seneca really add in boot-ageness with his "timely" gag. I mean, he's just recorded Drusus's unfortunate end for all posterity only to go... ummm... adding insult to injury. (Teehee... tired wordplay is allowed on this blog. But only when I do it. Your tired wordplay is just tired.) Drusus was in fact assassinated and I'm thinking Seneca is (not subtly) hinting at the very unpleasant way it was done.

But among the worst I count also those who have time for nothing but wine and lust; for none have more shameful engrossments.

The old spoilsport! I think he must be meaning something else with his whole living discussion.

The others, even if they are possessed by the empty dream of glory, nevertheless go astray in a seemly manner;

The "empty dream of glory" is good. I'm keeping that one for future arguments. For my future war on ambition.

Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is busied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when its interests are divided, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.

His points here about the mind not stretching deeply when busy speak about our deficit of knowledge in the face of the venerably cliched distraction of information overload. It's not the quantity of information presented to us. Nor even the quality which is dubious and cursedly our new function is now to discern this quality. Blastedly... remember when you could almost trust information presented to you. That blissful state. No rather, it is distraction that haunts us. Why would you think it is bad to be driven to such a place? I bet it's even a placename in Canada or Australia or somewhere. Distraction, Ontario.

It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and—what will perhaps make you wonder more—it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.

This is the line. The soundbite you came for. Pause now so you may marvel.

Believe me, it takes a great man and one who has risen far above human weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be filched from him, and it follows that the life of such a man is very long because he has devoted wholly to himself whatever time he has had. None of it lay neglected and idle; none of it was under the control of another, for, guarding it most grudgingly, he found nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange for his time.

The unfriendly side. Try telling someone you're not going to talk to them because your life is too short. It's not nice being popular anyways.

Indeed, you will hear many of those who are burdened by great prosperity cry out at times in the midst of their throngs of clients, or their pleadings in court, or their other glorious miseries: "I have no chance to live." Of course you have no chance! All those who summon you to themselves, turn you away from your own self.

He must have been very popular. Best friends with Nero and all.

Check off, I say, and review the days of your life; you will see that very few, and those the refuse. have been left for you. That man who had prayed for the fasces, when he attains them, desires to lay them aside and says over and over: "When will this year be over!" That man gives games, and, after setting great value on gaining the chance to give them, now says: "When shall I be rid of them?"

Recognise the feeling?

But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow. For what new pleasure is there that any hour can now bring? They are all known, all have been enjoyed to the full. Mistress Fortune may deal out the rest as she likes; his life has already found safety. Something may be added to it, but nothing taken from it, and he will take any addition as the man who is satisfied and filled takes the food which he does not desire and yet can hold. And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles; he has not lived long—he has existed long.

That horrible curse indeed. Nothing worst than to accuse someone of existing rather than living. Am saving it up for the next Tory at dinner.

I am often filled with wonder when I see some men demanding the time of others and those from whom they ask it most indulgent. Both of them fix their eyes on the object of the request for time, neither of them on the time itself; just as if what is asked were nothing, what is given, nothing. Men trifle with the most precious thing in the world; but they are blind to it because it is an incorporeal thing, because it does not come beneath the sight of the eyes, and for this reason it is counted a very cheap thing—nay, of almost no value at all. Men set very great store by pensions and doles, and for these they hire out their labour or service or effort. But no one sets a value on time; all use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But see how these same people clasp the knees of physicians if they fall ill and the danger of death draws nearer, see how ready they are, if threatened with capital punishment, to spend all their possessions in order to live!

Life is divided into three periods—that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. For the last is the one over which Fortune has lost control, is the one which cannot be brought back under any man's power. But men who are engrossed lose this; for they have no time to look back upon the past, and even if they should have, it is not pleasant to recall something they must view with regret. They are, therefore, unwilling to direct their thoughts backward to ill-spent hours, and those whose vices become obvious if they review the past, even the vices which were disguised under some allurement of momentary pleasure, do not have the courage to revert to those hours. No one willingly turns his thought back to the past, unless all his acts have been submitted to the censorship of his conscience, which is never deceived; he who has ambitiously coveted, proudly scorned, recklessly conquered, treacherously betrayed, greedily seized, or lavishly squandered, must needs fear his own memory.

Ouch. This Seneca bloke is harsh. I shall live in fear of my memory.

The mind that is untroubled and tranquil has the power to roam into all the parts of its life; but the minds of the engrossed, just as if weighted by a yoke, cannot turn and look behind. And so their life vanishes into an abyss;

Present time is very brief, so brief, indeed, that to some there seems to be none; for it is always in motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it has come, and can no more brook delay than the firmament or the stars, whose ever unresting movement never lets them abide in the same track.

Oh... I do love metaphysics.

Even the leisure of some men is engrossed; in their villa or on their couch, in the midst of solitude, although they have withdrawn from all others, they are themselves the source of their own worry; we should say that these are living, not in leisure, but in busy idleness.

There just is no winning here. You are busy being idle if you are not careful and much the same worse it is as you are busy being busy.

Would you say that that man is at leisure who arranges with finical care his Corinthian bronzes, that the mania of a few makes costly, and spends the greater part of each day upon rusty bits of copper?

Well... he certainly isn't working! The choice to me is clear, just if only it were to be presented me. I'll take the bronzes, naughty or not.

These have not leisure, but idle occupation.

Yeah, okay. Bronzery may not be a most important activity. Way to crush the favourite hobbies of others.

I hear that one of these pampered people—provided that you can call it pampering to unlearn the habits of human life—when he had been lifted by hands from the bath and placed in his sedan-chair, said questioningly: "Am I now seated?"

Magic... just magic. I'm keeping this one for when I am next assisted in my inebriated condition. Am I now upright? And then take in one of my prompt dives.

Do you think that this man, who does not know whether he is sitting, knows whether he is alive, whether he sees, whether he is at leisure? I find it hard to say whether I pity him more if he really did not know, or if he pretended not to know this.

Seneca spoils all my fun. I'm beginning to see where Nero was coming from. Still, Seneca contines for a bit about the guy in the chair and so delighting in giving him abuse. I wonder who it was he was talking about? I bet the Romans all knew. Sigh... vicious gossip and abuse is the same across two millenia.

It would be tedious to mention all the different men who have spent the whole of their life over chess or ball or the practice of baking their bodies in the sun. They are not unoccupied whose pleasures are made a busy occupation. For instance, no one will have any doubt that those are laborious triflers who spend their time on useless literary problems, of whom even among the Romans there is now a great number. It was once a foible confined to the Greeks to inquire into what number of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, whether moreover they belong to the same author, and various other matters of this stamp, which, if you keep them to yourself, in no way pleasure your secret soul, and, if you publish them, make you seem more of a bore than a scholar.

Haha... nasty and beautiful at the same time. So the authorship question has been about for more than 2000 years. It must really be time to put it to bed. We're not going to know, folks. Honest. And we could keep at it if you like... but well... angels on pinheads and dimensions of the Ark and Soloman's Temple and all such rubbish too. Alas, the academy must be full of bores.

e may excuse also those who inquire into this—who first induced the Romans to go on board ship. It was Claudius, and this was the very reason he was surnamed Caudex, because among the ancients a structure formed by joining together several boards was called a caudex, whence also the Tables of the Law are called codices, and, in the ancient fashion, boats that carry provisions up the Tiber are even to-day called codicariae.

I see... entymology can never be neglected.

And, doubtless, this too may find some excuse—but does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according to report, was conspicuous among the leaders of old for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by animals of monstrous bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise human. O, what blindness does great prosperity cast upon our minds! When he was casting so many troops of wretched human beings to wild beasts born under a different sky, when he was proclaiming war between creatures so ill matched, when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman people, who itself was soon to be forced to shed more. he then believed that he was beyond the power of Nature. But later this same man, betrayed by Alexandrine treachery, offered himself to the dagger of the vilest slave, and then at last discovered what an empty boast his surname[Magnus] was.

Pompey bashing was probably expedient in them days. In light that the mad muppet in the Emperor's office was still officially related to Caesar. Although, a case can be pleaded how Pompey was merely being Pompey and explempar Pompey, aside from the losing part. Not to be risked perhaps.

Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really live;

Tada! A real shocker this to imagine that our dear author was in fact making such fantastic use of his life. And prigish in telling us too. But there you have it. Forget Jesus, philosophy will save you. It will set you free.

The condition of all who are engrossed is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labour at engrossments that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world—loving and hating.

Never work is the message. See sidebar for details.

And so when you see a man often wearing the robe of office, when you see one whose name is famous in the Forum, do not envy him; those things are bought at the price of life.

Another comfort. I'll mention it to Mr. Gates when we next meet. He won't be much bothered, I think.

Life has left some in the midst of their first struggles, before they could climb up to the height of their ambition; some, when they have crawled up through a thousand indignities to the crowning dignity, have been possessed by the unhappy thought that they have but toiled for an inscription on a tomb;

No one keeps death in view, no one refrains from far-reaching hopes; some men, indeed, even arrange for things that lie beyond life—huge masses of tombs and dedications of public works and gifts for their funeral-pyres and ostentatious funerals. But, in very truth, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted by the light of torches and wax tapers, as though they had lived but the tiniest span.

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