On the Shortness of Life
A short essay to a busy man on why life is long enough if it is not wasted.
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.
Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, 1, after Aubrey Stewart
What it is
One of Seneca’s ten moral essays and the most read. The claim is in the first paragraph: life is not short, it is squandered. The rest of the essay is a catalogue of the ways, from ambition to leisure that is not really leisure, and a closing invitation to spend time with the philosophers of the past instead.
Where to start
At the beginning, and read it whole. It is one argument.
Which translation
C. D. N. Costa’s Penguin Great Ideas edition (On the Shortness of Life, 2004) is the one to buy; it adds two other essays and costs very little. Aubrey Stewart’s 1889 translation is public domain. James Romm’s How to Have a Life (Princeton, 2022) is the newest and has the Latin facing.
After this
The Letters to Lucilius, starting with Letter 1, which makes the same case fifteen years later.