I. Life Is Not Short

Seneca opens with his thesis: we do not have a short life. We have a life we waste.

Most people, Paulinus, complain that life is short. They groan that nature has been cruel to us, giving us so brief a span that we are barely ready to live before it is over. This feeling is everywhere. You hear it from ordinary people. You hear it from great men. The most famous physicians have said it. Aristotle complained about it.

They are all wrong.

Life is not short. We make it short. We are not poor in time. We are wasteful of it.

Think of it this way. When a great fortune falls into the hands of a bad owner, it disappears in moments. The same fortune, in the hands of a careful person, grows through use. Our time works the same way. Life is long enough for anyone who knows how to use it well. It is long enough to learn what matters, to do the work you were made to do, to love clearly and understand yourself before the end.

The problem is not the size of the container. The problem is what we pour into it.