A Roman philosopher named Lucius Annaeus Seneca wrote that 2,000
years ago. Recently I stumbled across Seneca’s essay “On the
Shortness of Life.” It’s a short read, and a great one. Seneca
talks about how many people reach the end of their lives and
bemoan the fact that there is “not enough time” to live fully.
Seneca rejects this idea completely. He says: It is not that we
have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life
is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous
measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things
if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered
in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end,
forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has
passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is —
the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we
have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. He also suggests
that we should manage time like money and not spend it
foolishly: Men do not