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December 26th

LIFE IS LONG—IF YOU KNOW HOW TO USE IT

“It’s not at all that we have too short a time to live, but that we

squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and it’s given in

sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But

when it’s poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when it’s

employed to no good end, we’re finally driven to see that it has

passed by before we even recognized it passing. And so it is—we

don’t receive a short life, we make it so.”

—SENECA, ON THE BREVITY OF LIFE, 1.3–4a

o one knows how long they have to live, but sadly, we can be sure of
one thing: we’ll waste far too much of life. Waste it sitting around,
waste it chasing the wrong things, waste it by refusing to take the time to
ask ourselves what’s actually important to us. Far too often, we’re like the
overconfident academics that Petrarch criticized in his classic essay on
ignorance—the types who “fritter away their powers incessantly in caring
for things outside of them and seek themselves there.” Yet they have no
idea this is what they’re doing.
So today, if you find yourself rushed or uttering the words “I just don’t
have enough time,” stop and take a second. Is this actually true? Or have
you just committed to a lot of unnecessary things? Are you actually being
efficient, or have you assumed a great deal of waste into your life? The
average American spends something like forty hours a year in traffic. That’s
months over the course of a life. And for “traffic,” you can substitute so
many activities—from fighting with others to watching television to
daydreaming.
Your life is plenty long—just use it properly.