Seneca | On the Shortness of Life

📩 Want daily wisdom? Sign up for Perennial Meditations to receive ancient lessons for modern life: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to Sundays with Seneca on the Perennial Meditations podcast. Join the search for ancient lessons for modern living in the writing and Stoic philosophy of Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

In a letter known today as On the Shortness of Life, Seneca wrote, "Infinitely swift is the flight of time, as those see more clearly who are looking backwards. For when we are intent on the present, we do not notice it, so gentle is the passage of time’s headlong flight.

Do you ask the reason for this? All past time is in the same place; it all presents the same aspect to us, it lies together. Everything slips into the same abyss. Besides, an event which in its entirety is of brief compass cannot contain long intervals. The time which we spend in living is but a point, nay, even less than a point. But this point of time, infinitesimal as it is, nature has mocked by making it seem outwardly of longer duration; she has taken one portion thereof and made it infancy, another childhood, another youth, another the gradual slope, so to speak, from youth to old age, and old age itself is still another. How many steps for how short a climb!" [...]

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit perennial.substack.com/subscribe