Seneca, intellectual time traveler
Seneca urges us to guard our time vigilantly - and to spend some of it with ancient philosophers. His ideas on how to live well in a world filled with uncertainty still resonate today.
Last time, I wrote about one of my philosophical role models, Hipparchia. Now, I’m returning to another model: Seneca. I shared my thoughts on him a few months back, and here, I’ll go deeper into why I keep coming back to Seneca for inspiration. In short: many of his ideas are incredibly relevant to life today—and the guy really knew how to write.
Seneca, a man of many contradictions
Many modern readers have mixed feelings about Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Roman statesman, philosopher, and playwright (c. 1 BCE – CE 65), because they see a vast difference between his Stoic thinking (expressed in his eloquent writing) and the way he lived his life (as a politician in the Roman Empire).
For example: He praised living without wealth, and yet he was extremely rich and sought to accumulate more assets during his career; he decried those who chased political power and influence, and yet he served in a key leadership role for an emperor (Nero) who became increasingly corrupt; he railed against the effects of anger, an emotion of “madness,” and yet the irate tone in some of his writing is, at times, unmistakable!
But as I’ve written before, it is perhaps because of his contradictions and imperfections that I admire Seneca—he was no perfect sage, but a person trying to build self-awareness and understanding of his world, working (however unevenly) on living by his principles and improving himself. Seneca was an articulate observer of his time, and of himself. In his writing, he shared complicated thoughts for others also coping with the timeless challenges of a world filled with social, financial, and political pressures. To read more about his biography, check out my previous post on Seneca here.
Seneca’s question: how do we live well?
Seneca understood that living well is hard. And he didn’t see himself as the ultimate expert. I’ve written in a previous post about his Letter 27 to Lucilius, in which Seneca addresses Lucilius’s question to him:
What, are you giving me advice? Indeed, have you already advised yourself, already corrected your own faults? Is this the reason why you have leisure to reform other people?
Seneca answers:
No, I am not so shameless as to undertake to cure others when I am ill myself. I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same hospital. Listen to me, therefore, as you would if I were talking to myself. I am admitting you to my inmost thoughts…
He acknowledges that we are all hoping to get better, and none of us have the expertise to provide a cure. However, we keep trying to relieve our “troubles” and “share the remedy” with each other… working to improve over time. This metaphor applies beautifully to our struggle to live by the virtues and to focus on purposeful goals in a chaotic world.
In light of this challenge to live meaningful lives while coping with uncertainty, Seneca’s essay On the Shortness of Life resonates with modern readers. Seneca famously wrote that life is long, if we know how to live well. But many do not know how, he said. His depiction of the goals of his peers is riddled with critique. People who spend their time pursuing political power, financial rewards, military glory, lust or gluttony—they are all wasting it, according to Seneca.
That’s because those folks give their hours over to other people or to their baser impulses, rather than conserving precious time for their own learning/study, purposeful leisure, and self-improvement. It’s aspirational—and not always realistic in a society where money makes the world go round. But it’s worth recalling this when we take a look at our busy schedules and think about what kinds of pursuits lead to eudamonia.
Reclaiming our time
What inspiration can we gather from Seneca’s analysis of how to use our time? He asked:
Why should not life be ample for people who spend it far removed from all business? None of it is made over to another, none scattered in this direction or that; none of it is entrusted to fortune, none wasted through neglect; none is lost through being given away freely, none is superfluous; the whole of life yields a return, so to speak. And so, however short, it is amply sufficient…
Seneca’s critique of the emptiness of business pursuits is clever (of course, he means business writ large—there were no management consultants, big 5 accounting firms, or “Magnificent Seven” tech companies in Seneca’s day). I smiled when he called out the “return” on investment of life.
It’s clear that in modern times, corporate roles often do take over people’s lives, banishing the chance to contemplate, rest, and restore—hence the epidemic of corporate burnout. Though not a doctor, Seneca prescribes taking back our time. When I get sucked into meetings or email chains that consume time without creating value, I think of this and try to limit the time spent. And as a practice, blocking out a number of hours a week for reading and writing, for meditation and contemplation, or for personal projects that we care about is a wise start on this effort to reclaim our time.
The dangers of distractions
But even when we have time, we risk losing it through our own carelessness—above all, through distraction. In a way, Seneca foresaw the world of distractions that we now live in. He explored how people were preoccupied with unimportant things even in ancient times, a situation that is far worse in today’s “chronically online” era:
No activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied… since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak, crammed into it. Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man; yet there is nothing which is harder to learn.
Of course, we modern folks know that there is a powerful entity that does benefit from our online distraction and who promotes our inability to focus on what matters deeply: companies selling online ads and purveyors of e-commerce, especially through social media platforms.
I always remind my teenage kids that by “giving their time” to online platforms they are selling their attention to the highest bidder. They realize this, but still enjoy a good Reel or YouTube video, and that’s fine—as long as they know enough not to let their attention be completely hijacked and commodified.
Learning to live through philosophy and ideas
Seneca develops an idea that is central to ancient philosophy: we must learn how to live. It’s not an inborn trait, but takes time to develop the art of living. We can see that with our kids as they begin to get older and seek out a sense of purpose… It takes time and effort to find yourself and understand how to set your own goals, and ensure they are valuable ones.
By purposely spending our time on our own self-development and education, we have a chance to live well, Seneca writes:
Learning how to live takes a whole life… it is the sign of a great person… not to allow his or her time to be frittered away: he or she has the longest possible life simply because whatever time was available he or she devoted entirely to him or herself. None of it lay fallow and neglected, none of it under another’s control; for being an extremely thrifty guardian of his or her time, he or she never found anything for which it was worth exchanging.
Again, Seneca conveniently avoids the fact that most people are not endowed with huge estates and vast sums of wealth, and our chances of winning the lottery are very low! So we do need to devote time to activities that bring in income.
But let’s put that aside for a moment to find out, according to Seneca, how one could make truly worthy use of one’s time. What pursuits could make life seem long, when we all know that time seems to pass far too quickly? (I’ll venture to say it’s not waiting in line at the DMV, though that does seem LOOOONG.) Seneca had an answer for this too, which you, as students of the Stoics, may find interesting:
Of all people, they alone who give their time to philosophy are at leisure, they alone really live. For it’s not just their own lifetime that they watch over carefully, but they annex every age to their own; all the years that have gone before are added to their own. … those most distinguished founders of hallowed thoughts came into being for us, and for us they prepared a way of living. We are led by the work of others into the presence of the most beautiful treasures, which have been pulled from darkness and brought to light.
It's a smart answer: intellectual time travel! Spend your days studying philosophy and great ideas, Seneca says, and you can find a virtual museum of treasures. We can surely still do that today, adding on several centuries of stimulating philosophical exploration to the mix.
Seneca takes it even farther, getting us into Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure territory (the movie is very silly—but I laughed at the ridiculous joining of American teens with Socrates, and more):
We can debate with Socrates, entertain doubt with Carneades, be at peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, and go beyond it with the Cynics. …. [we can] have Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and the other high priests of philosophical study, and Aristotle and Theophrastus, as closest companions every day. None of these will ever be unavailable to you, none of these will fail to send his visitor off in a happier condition and more at ease with himself… None of them will diminish your years, but each will share his own years with you. … This is the sole means of prolonging mortality, or rather of transforming it into immortality.
This is an appealing thought experiment. I caution, however, that without real humans to share ideas with, we risk a two-dimensional view of the world—so let’s add a sprinkling of three-dimensional, modern humanity to our thought adventures. We can discuss, write, and speak with our contemporaries, sharing our challenges and the insights we have gained on our journeys, as we discover a thoughtful, purposeful way of living.
Journaling to understand ourselves
To make tangible progress in our moral lives, Seneca wrote about a practice: evening journaling. It was an approach passed down from the Pythagoreans. Seneca spent each evening before bed writing down what he had done well, and what he had not done well—an effort to improve his own thoughts and behaviors.
It is a practice I’ve taken up recently, writing brief jottings before I sleep in a journal or the notes app on my phone. It helps me better understand the emotional ups and downs of my days, and the stresses, challenges, and weaker points that I’d like to address.
As I write, I acknowledge that I did do some things well, perhaps many things in a single day. (This is NOT a productivity hack, but it does feel good to account for these things!) This approach is helpful for someone who experiences critical inner voices. It seems healthy to externalize that voice of critique onto a page, to make it rational and observational rather than self-flagellating. Overall, this journaling practice helps with building awareness of who I am, what I am doing, and what I want to do better.
Seneca the writer
I’ll add one more reason that Seneca inspires me: he’s an excellent writer. His style is readable and amusing, and you can feel his personality coming across the page, even in translation many centuries later.
So I recommend a little Seneca before bed, just before you write your daily reflections. As Seneca would counsel us, why not spend a bit of time communing with a great, complex thinker, and elevate your own actions and thoughts to the realm of the philosophers?
Beautiful 🌹