Seneca on the proper use of time

http://reasonandmeaning.com/2015/03/04/seneca-on-the-proper-use-of-time/

by antman • 11 years ago

138 20 11 years ago

whysonot• 11 years ago

Reminds me of the popular Steve Jobs quote about death and decision-making:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving what is truly important

The Dalai Lama too:

Half of our lives we spend asleep. The first ten years we are merely children, and after twenty we begin to grow old. Meanwhile, our time is taken up with suffering, anxiety, fighting, sickness, and so forth, all of which limit our ability to practice

NhanH• 11 years ago

It's interesting that the Dalai Lama stated "after twenty we begin to grow old" -- for the majority of us, that seems to be when life barely begins itself.

bhrgunatha• 11 years ago

Perhaps he's being more literal and he means (roughly) peak physical maturity. Although I've read different estimates - I seem to remember people mention somewhere in the 20s for when your body has completed it's full physical growth cycle.

dredmorbius• 11 years ago

I'd also argue that full intellectual maturity comes well after age 20. The intensity may be higher earlier on, but maturity, as I've witnessed it, seems to peak later (assuming it does develop at all).

(Edit to add): It's been known for a while that physiological maturity of the brain occurs after age 20:

"Adulthood: What the Brain Says About Maturity" http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/28/do-we-need-t...

Neuroscientists now know that brain maturation continues far later into development than had been believed previously. Significant changes in brain anatomy and activity are still taking place during young adulthood, especially in prefrontal regions that are important for planning ahead, anticipating the future consequences of one’s decisions, controlling impulses, and comparing risk and reward. Indeed, some brain regions and systems do not reach full maturity until the early or mid-20s.

"The Adolescent Brain -- Why Teenagers Think and Act Differently" http://www.edinformatics.com/news/teenage_brains.htm

A recent study by Lebel and Beaulieu (see below) reinforce the above findings that the human brain doesn't stop developing at adolescence, but continues well into our 20s.

My "if it develops at all" comment has more to do with theories of cognitive development -- higher levels of functioning are fairly rare. Jean Piaget's work is recommended:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maturity_(psychological)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget%27s_theory_of_Cogn...

My speculation that full intellectual maturity lags physiological mature is my own, I've no references on that.

Mz3• 11 years ago

I rather like this line:

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.

A lot of the rest seems like self-contradictory mumbo jumbo -- which may just mean that I don't understand it. But it both implores you to spend your time on that which is important and also dismisses having material ambition. There are good points to such ideas, but, bereft of context, it really tells me nothing.

Since we are just dancing on this earth for a short time, what is wrong with taking some time to enjoy life, to smell the roses? If we prefer that to seeking great accomplishments and we are all just dust in the wind, we can decide which we prefer, can we not?

(Edit: And now my own comment doesn't make sense, because I can't make sense of what Seneca wrote. What "great accomplishments" does he value? He seems to simultaneously implore people to be ambitious workaholics and lambaste them for the same.)

Edit #2: If it makes any difference to how people interpret my above remarks: I spent about a year at death's door. I am nearly 50 years old and have a condition with a life-expectancy in the 30's. I have been living under sentence of death a long time. If you don't enjoy life at least a little here and there, if it is nothing but unremitting misery, seriously, give me death.

bcoughlan• 11 years ago

But it both implores you to spend your time on that which is important and also dismisses having material ambition.

The sentence you quoted struck me also, but I don't see it as dismissing ambition of any kind. I once had the mentality of accepting being miserable and rationalizing it for future rewards. I forgot to appreciate and enjoy what I have, and thus my happiness forever resided in the future. But a person can have happiness in the present while still working for the future.

Frondo• 11 years ago

Elsewhere in Seneca's writing, it's a bit clearer what he means:

Pursue wisdom. Learn not just for learning's sake, but so that you can elevate mankind just a little higher by having lived.

Mz3• 11 years ago

Thank you.

Perhaps a mistake to say it, but, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it's all just a simulation in 4d anyway. At some point, the universe implodes back upon itself and everything will be gone. So, ultimately, it kind of doesn't actually matter one way or the other.

Which means we can kind of do what we want, decide what we most value, if we so choose.

I do the things I do because a) "Everyone needs a vocation" (if you have read the play The importance of being Earnest, you might understand that to mean "We all have to keep ourselves occupied somehow between now and the time we die", which is how I mean it) and b) while I see no particular moral imperative to "elevate mankind," it's fun to work on solving hard problems and work on opening up opportunities that can't exist without that "elevation." More complex things emerge from less complex underpinnings and then things can get interesting.

I have to be here anyway (unless I commit suicide). Might as well spend that time doing interesting things that I feel okay about. Because while my body is dust in the wind and, someday, even this solar system will no doubt be dust in some galactic wind, my quality of life -- my experience of it -- matters to me. And a lot of that stuff that people call "wisdom" or "virtue" has a proven track record of improving my own contentment.

/talking in public before lunch, usually a mistake

michaelsbradley• 11 years ago

Good stuff! It made me recall one of my favorite sermons from St. Josemaría Escrivá:

Time is a Treasure

http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/friends_of_god-chapter-3.ht...

Yhippa• 11 years ago

The stuff about mentorship is gold. I wish there were efficient ways to connect mentors and mentees. The last chance I had to have a mentor was at a big corporation but the focus seemed to be heavily favored towards being successful at that company, not the career I wanted. I didn't have a good way of finding a mentor so I took what was available to me which was still helpful.

Sometimes I feel that the Internet can be a mentor of sorts. There is a whole source of blogs and advice out there. Maybe that could be a substitute if you don't have the connections to find a mentor. The most difficult thing about that by far is separating the wheat from the chaff.

hownottowrite• 11 years ago

When this topic comes up, I always recommend Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/0...

snikeris• 11 years ago

Time is an illusory phenomenon that arises due to memory.

guelo• 11 years ago

So that leads to, if we could inject memories we could live more than a lifetime's worth. Or maybe accessing others' memories via stories, (reading, movies, etc.) adds to our store of memories and makes our lives richer.

But this is assuming that having the most memories at the end is the goal of life. But your memories are also gone when you die.

The only thing that remains after you die are memories in others' minds about you. The bigger your achievements the longer the memories about you will last in the collective mind. Maybe that's a better life goal.

Mz3• 11 years ago

But your memories are also gone when you die.

Unprovable assumption, methinks. :-)

meric• 11 years ago

I find I enjoy learning more than knowing. I would think voluntarily to become a like a child and learn again might be enjoyable. Your mind is a memory basket whose purpose is to experience life. Is it more useful at this purpose being full, or empty?

john_b• 11 years ago

You have completely missed the point.

Seneca cared about using one's time wisely in order to maximise the meaningful accomplishments and noble conduct of one's life. Whether time is illusory or real is irrelevant to his philosophy. One can only accomplish so much in life, and much of life is wasted because of poor choices of how to spend one's time. I've arguably wasted some of mine by writing this.

ununun• 11 years ago

How do you define wisdom? What choices are wise and which ones aren't?

menzoic• 11 years ago

Time exist outside of the human brain and its rate can be modified.

mikro2nd• 11 years ago

Aside from the obvious benefits of this perspective to bring clarity in deciding what you work on each day, each week, each hour, it also brings to me a strong sense of respect for other peoples' time.

I strive, for this very reason, to always be on time for meetings. If I say I'll see you at the coffee shop at 10:30, I'll be there at or before 10:30, barring any unanticipatable derailments. It doesn't pay to get obsessive about it, but such time consciousness fosters a respect for the other person's death. A good way to piss me off is to be persistently careless with meeting times; you're showing a marked disrespect for my time/death. And your own.

Being aware of death also helps me maintain quality, precision and focus when dealing with groups of people: I was always very aware of "other peoples' time" when addressing groups (sometimes large groups) of people in the forms of teaching and speaking at conferences. The awareness that, for each second of my time "spent", I am being granted the amazing gift of tens, hundreds or even thousands of seconds of everybody else's time. To me a humbling thought that always helped me get my own damn ego out of the way and focus on adding quality/value to the content of whatever I was trying to deliver.

doctorstupid• 11 years ago

Seneca warns against the perils of indulging in heedless luxury, and yet according to Dio, he at one point ordered “five hundred tables of citrus wood with legs of ivory, all identically alike, and he served banquets on them.”

Seneca on the proper use of time

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