Know Your Daimon: Reflection Prompts

These questions are for you. Not for a grade, not for a test. Just for thinking. Take one. Sit with it. There are no right answers.

1. Seneca says life is not short. We just waste most of it. Look at the last week of your life honestly. How much of that time was spent on things you chose? How much was spent on things that were simply demanded of you?

2. Is there something you have been putting off, telling yourself you will get to it when things calm down or when you are more ready? What would it look like to start now, even in a small way?

3. Seneca describes the restless mind: always moving, never settling, unable to stay present. Do you recognize this in yourself? When do you feel it most? What usually triggers it?

4. He says the cure for restlessness is finding out what you actually value and building your life around it. If you made a list of your top three values right now, what would they be? Does how you spend your time match that list?

5. Seneca says your time is worth more than your money because you can earn more money but not more time. Who or what do you give your time to most freely? Is that where it should be going?

6. He says the happy life is available right now, not when circumstances improve. What is one thing you are waiting for before you allow yourself to feel that your life is good? Is the wait necessary?

7. The essay on tranquility ends with a recommendation to laugh. Not at others, but at the way we take ourselves too seriously. What in your own life could use a lighter grip? What are you holding onto so tightly that it is hurting you?

8. Seneca says a person who lives well is actually extending their life, not by adding years, but by adding depth. What would a day of real depth look like for you? Have you had one recently?

9. Chapter I of On the Happy Life says do not decide where you are going by looking at where everyone else is going. Where in your life are you moving with the crowd without having asked whether that direction is actually yours?

10. Try Seneca's "old man's accounting" on yourself. Walk mentally through the past five years and count only the hours that were genuinely yours. What would that accounting look like? What would surprise you?

11. Seneca says the busiest life is the shortest. Have you ever been so busy you lost sight of what you were living for? What pulled you back? If you have not been pulled back yet, what would it take?

12. On Tranquility of Mind says there are times to engage in the world and times to withdraw. Where in your life is it time to engage more? Where is it time to withdraw?

13. Seneca owned vast wealth while writing about the unimportance of wealth. He said wealth is a servant, not a master. Look honestly at your own relationship with money. Is it serving you, or are you serving it?

14. Seneca died calmly because he had practiced for decades. If you were told you had to face what he faced next year, what would you wish you had practiced more of?

15. Seneca wrote: as long as you live, keep learning how to live. What are you learning right now about how to live? If nothing comes to mind, what should you be learning?

16. One final practice, drawn from the closing of On the Happy Life. When you face the gap between who you say you are and how you actually live, you have two options. You can lower your words to match your life. Or you can keep your words honest and treat your life as the work of catching up to them. Which option feels honest to you right now? In what specific area do you need to either close the gap with action or admit honestly that the standard you set is not actually one you intend to meet? The wise person, Seneca says, is not the one who has arrived. It is the one who keeps pointing toward where they intend to go and walks toward it slowly, imperfectly, but without altering course.

Know Your Ethos