Seneca On Time

First, I apologize for getting today’s note out later than normal. Silas had a 24-hour battle with a stomach bug earlier this week, and that little bug found its way to me this morning–I always tell the boys that I don’t get sick, and Silas’s response when I told him I caught his bug was, “What?!? You said you never get sick.” I love his innocence and that he believed me. I’m currently watching The Last Dance on Netflix and while I will not compare writing today’s note to Michael Jordan’s flu game, that game provides a little inspiration to show up today and write today’s note.

I will call on a friend of mine, the great Stoic Seneca, for some quotes for you to consider today. Marcus Aurelius is probably the most famous Stoic and I am a fan of him as well–I have him tattooed on my forearm alongside Seneca. 

My favorite quotes from Seneca all involve the topic of time. Read through these and see how they sit with you:

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”

“Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.” (This is the first time I’ve come across this one…damn!)

See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC