#Things to consider

  • Time is what you pay attention to. It’s not that life is short but that we waste a lot of it, by not being intentional. Take stock of what matters to you and happily disregard what doesn’t.
  • Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied person; yet there is nothing which is harder to learn.
  • The person who spends all his time on his own needs, who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day.
  • The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.
  • It does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind.
  • It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil.
  • There is no evil in poverty, as anyone knows who has not yet arrived at the lunatic state of greed and luxury, which ruin everything.
  • Nothing satisfies greed, but even a little satisfies nature.
  • “So if you must fill your time, write something in a simple style for your own use and not for publication: less toil is needed if you study only for the day.”

#Reading log

2017-02-15: I got a great deal of book recommendations from 📚 Tools of Titans. One of them was On the Shortness of Life by the Stoic philosopher Seneca, born 4 years B.C and died in 65 AD. It was a very easy read, which surprised me since the writing is almost 2000 years old. It’s a short book just over 100 pages containing a philosophical essay on how wasteful we are of time. It was fascinating how much I could relate to it, it’s a timeless piece that I will reread many times over.