De Brevitate Vitae — On the Shortness of Life
Seneca (Seneca, 2022) wrote about the shortness of life in this book and stated that life should be filled by us. Life can be short, however, filling with hate and immorality will create an empty life.
Thus, Seneca states that people should not give importance to immoral actions. Immoral actions create hate between us. Firstly, we must get along with ourselves. We must make peace with ourselves. This, comes from knowing the causes of our actions.
From childhood, I always questioned. I questioned my existence, and my goal in this life, and try to make sense of my actions. Why am I acting like “this” when I encountered “this action”? This leads to knowing myself, actually, through life it helped me a lot. By knowing myself, I tried to reduce my prejudices, my weak spots, and my anger points. I know what I like precisely. Because of that, when planning my day, I plan with consideration of my psychology. Planning with knowing thyself, creates stable plans with no vapidity.
“You have desires of immortals and fears of mortals.”
A person who got all minutes to himself/ herself is the person that lives most of her/his life. This does not mean all life must be spend with yourself, rather, even you are with other persons, you must not cross your line, regret your principles. People must plan all minutes he/she got. Because when you plan, no seconds goes to waste and he/she lives to the fullest.
“It is unimportant activity to live, for a person who his/her mind is busy all the time”
Those who dedicate their life to wisdom will communicate with all of influential minds from all of the time. I can communicate with a philosopher from 1st century by reading his book. I can communicate with Einstein by reading his article. I can understand and communicate with 18th century French people by reading books about them. Seneca states that those who follow wisdom are those who live their life fully (Seneca, 2022). These people will not force you to die, rather, will show you how to live.
“Procrastination is waste of life. Don’t procrastinate, every day takes something from us one by one, the time, and by pledging future, takes away today.”
Seneca, rightfully, thinks that there is no tomorrow. I have the same mentality. There is neither past day nor tomorrow. There is only now. You need to focus on the current time. Nihilism comes from the acceptance of death. However, acceptance of death creates an opportunity for us. Accepting mortality increases the value of now. You need to do it now. Life cannot and will not provide your expectations everytime, but you need to start now. Build now.
When we see a person who makes lots of money and lives in luxury from harmful businesses, we should know that life cost is the life of the person himself. The life of that person is worthless and wasted. Because he/she must be on his/her guard all the time, he/she cannot have a life without looking back and forward. This is the opposite of living, being in the moment. We are not our jobs. Jobs are not defining us. In Turkey, some bosses have harsh working hours and overtime. As I heard from some of my friends, even, some colleagues can blame you for not doing overtime. But you cannot blame one due to his/her enthusiasm for free time and creating his/her own thing. In his/her free time person can find his/her passion and create things that are meaningful to her/his and this will effect her/him work life also.
By being in the moment, I am not stating modern-day Carpe Diemism. If everyone would act caused by the moment, everyone should act the same. This attitude towards life does not give space to individualism. And individualism, self-respect knowing how valuable the time is what we must accept in our society.
References
Seneca. (2022). Yaşamın Kısalığı Üzerine & Mutlu Yaşam Üzerine. İstanbul: Kapra Yayıncılık.
