Going through Seneca's words...
On the Shortness of Life
"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."
(...)
"No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to yourself.
Life will 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 command or a people’s favor. As it started out on its first day,
so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the
outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile
death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available
for that."
(...)
How can we engage in a real fruition of Life?
"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… Just as travelers 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."
(...)
And for those who complain that they had not the same opportunities as others, here's a smart reply:
"We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the
parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance.
But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are
households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish
to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their
property too. Nor will this property need to be guarded meanly or
grudgingly: the more it is shared out, the greater it will become. These
will offer you a path to immortality and raise you to a point from
which no one is cast down. This is the only way to prolong mortality —
even to convert it to immortality."
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