Seneca On The Ancient Art of Slowing Down Time
“Alive time”vs “dead time”
How we spend our time is indeed how we spend our short lives.
Life offers a limited time for everyone: optimising your present time and using your precious time wisely should be at the top of the list of productive things to do.
But people are too busy and occupied with the affairs of an elusive future to notice they are wasting their precious and limited time.
When you are in a hurry, life is fleeting.
“We are not given a short life but we make it short; we are not ill-supplied with time but wasteful of it,” argues Seneca in his 2,000-year-old book, On the Shortness of Life.
Seneca was a Roman philosopher. Between 4 BCE and 65 CE, he was a senator and political advisor.
In his book, he cautions that people fail to fully appreciate the preciousness of our least renewable asset: time.
There’s a reason millions of people have many regrets at the end of their lives: people don’t pay enough attention to what they need for a meaningful life — they focus on what they want for a good life.
When you actively choose what to do, focus on meaningful experiences and slow down, time feels like it’s slowing down in your favour.
