Seneca on time: "It is not that we have little time, but that we waste much"

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was one of the most powerful men in Rome in the first century: adviser to the emperor Nero, writer, playwright and at the same time one of the best-known voices of Stoic philosophy. His life was full of contradictions: he wrote about simplicity while being very rich, and he died in 65 AD on the orders of the very emperor he had advised. Yet some of his texts remained among the most widely read of antiquity.

On the shortness of life

Probably around the year 49, Seneca wrote an essay to his friend Paulinus, who held a senior administrative post in Rome. It opens with an old complaint: most people, even the wise, say that life is too short. Seneca disagrees:

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. (trans. J. W. Basore)

The problem, in his view, is not the quantity but how we spend it. People are misers with their property, yet they give away their time without a thought, as if it were endless. They hand it to unimportant business, to borrowed ambitions, to waiting for a life that will start "later".

The postponed life

One of Seneca's sharpest observations concerns postponement. People say: "At fifty I will retire and live in peace." But who guarantees them fifty? And why leave the best part of life for the end, when it can no longer be used for anything else? For Seneca, that means beginning to live just when you should be finishing.

In his letters to his friend Lucilius he puts it even more briefly: everything else has been lent to us; only time is truly ours.

Seneca in the age of the phone

Seneca did not know phone notifications, but he knew endless visits, banquets and court intrigue. His questions read today almost unchanged. Here are three exercises inspired by him:

1. A time account. For three days, note every two hours where your time went. Not to judge yourself, but to see. Many people are surprised.
2. Seneca's question. Before accepting a meeting, a project or an hour in front of a screen, ask: "If this had to be paid for with money, would I buy it?"
3. Do not postpone the main thing. Choose something you have left "for when I have time" and give it half an hour this week.

An honest reading

Seneca wrote these words as a rich man, with slaves to do the daily chores. Many people today cannot choose how to spend most of their day: work, caring for children or the elderly are not "wasted time". His message should not be read as a rebuke to those who lack freedom. It is rather a reminder about the part of our time, however small, that is truly in our hands.

And for that part, Seneca's question remains strong: am I living this time, or merely passing it?