Our Most Precious Resource
Seneca on time and our mishandling of it
Seneca on time and our mishandling of it
The world over the last several decades has seen an increase in desire for more. With technology advancing, nearly anything we want is at the tips of our fingers, whether it be ordering from Amazon, browsing Project Guggenheim, or even streaming a television show.
Yet this is all a distraction.
We want more material objects around us because ultimately, we have no ability to “buy” ourselves the one thing we truly want more of: time. So we try to live our “best” lives through material possessions.
Seneca the Younger, the famous philosopher and tutor of Emperor Nero, believed that it wasn’t the fact that we had too short a life, rather, we wasted most of it and did not learn until it was too late.
Know Your Most Precious Resource
Most of us cherish our possessions. We desire the newest car, or want the watch we saw a celebrity wearing on Instagram. We want the promotion at work so we can move into the new house, or can receive the respect from our colleagues we believe we deserve.
And these are not bad or wrong necessarily, they’re just not our most valuable resource. Seneca argues that our most valuable resource is in fact time and for the majority of us, we do not even realize it.
In his first letter to Lucilius, Seneca states:
“Some moments are snatched from us, some are filched, and some just vanish. But no loss is as shameful as the one that comes about through carelessness.”
Embrace Today
The time we waste without realizing it is therefore the greatest sin to Seneca, especially because of the fact that no one thinks themselves being indebted to each other for the amount of time they take from the other.
But he suggests combating this by becoming aware of the passing of time and not allowing it to unconsciously slip away. In other words, embrace the moment you have.
“Take a close look, and you will see that when we are not doing well, most of life slips away from us; when we are inactive, much of it — but when we are inattentive, we miss it all.”
Time is an ever flowing river Marcus Aurelius once said meaning it flows in a single direction. This means that we must embrace the moments we have.
Have you ever listened to a professional athlete speak about their practice techniques? One of the most common traits amongst elite athletes is their conscious awareness of their actions as they practice. The same goes for our embracement of the moment.
To better hold onto the moment, we should feel the moment, and really think about the actions we’re taking. The same way a runner’s foot hits the ground and he takes note of how much force and toe strength he is pushing off with, we too should be consciously aware of our actions and working to harness the present moment through them.
“Embrace every hour. If you lay hands on today, you will find you are less dependent on tomorrow.”
The End is Closer than You Think
The hard truth that the majority of us attempt to forget is that our lives are much shorter than we can even imagine. This is why our time is so valuable. We are each given an allotment of time. How much, we do not know.
Do you ever reflect back on your life and realize how much time has already passed? What about flipping the scales and thinking about how much time remains?
Unfortunately, the existential crisis that permeates throughout our existence is not easy to comprehend, nor to handle. Yet Seneca encourages us to think about it and reminds us:
“We are wrong to think that death lies ahead: much of it has passed us by already, but for all our past life is in the grip of death.”
Seneca commented in his essay, On the Shortness of Life:
“But if each of us could have the tally of his future years set before him, as we can of our past years, how alarmed would be those who saw only a few years ahead, and how carefully would they use them!”
It’s long enough if we know how to use it he says, but shorter than we realize.
Count Out the Remaining Days
One way to help take back our time and ultimately our lives is through becoming aware of how much time we have remaining. Seneca recommends taking an audit of our lives:
“Mark off, I tell you, and review the days of your life: you will see that very few — the useless remnants — have been left to you.”
In his essay, On Anger, Seneca recommends that we take a look at the actions we take each and every day, never allowing anything to “hide” from ourselves.
“When the daylight has faded from view… I become an inspector and reexamine the course of my day, my deeds and words; I hide nothing from myself. I omit nothing.”
By holding ourselves accountable to our remaining time, we are more responsible to the outcomes of our life and thus have more accountability.
This means we are responsible for how we use our time.
If we do not allow others to monopolize our time and instead take back control, then we have more guidance over what we do with that time.
This is ultimately what smart people in business know: they do not want money to be rich, they want the money to buy themselves back time through the means of better productivity and systems. In essence, the only way to buy more time is to become more productive with the time we have.
Conclusion
While we like to pursue material things that we believe will help make us feel good, it is really time we want more of. Seneca recommends becoming more present in the actions we take and the time we allot to others. If we are not careful, others will remorselessly take our time. You cannot buy more time. You gain it by not allowing others to take it and by being aware of it and where you are allocating it.
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