The fine art of living

LUCIE ANNAEUS SENECA, often known simply as Seneca, (4 BC-AD 65) is one of my favourite philosophers. Works attributed to Seneca include a satire, a meteorological essay, philosophical essays, 124 letters dealing with moral issues, and nine tragedies.

In AD 49 he wrote a short manifesto against foot-draggers, shirkers, procrastinators and other ‘time-killers’ that seems as fresh and relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. He began with what in those days was a common complaint: That we are cursed with too short a life span, which often seemed to end just when we were getting ready for it.

“Nor was it just the man in the street who groans over this,” Seneca wrote, “The same feeling lay behind complaints from even distinguished men and women - who undoubtedly had the affluence and the means to enjoy their leisure”.

The problem, he said, lay elsewhere. “It’s not that we have too short a time to live, but that we waste a lot of it”, he added.

“Life is long enough, and sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were well invested,” said Seneca.

Even if we had 1,000 years to live, he said, our life would still shrink into the merest span because our ‘vice’ of wasting our time and allowing others to trespass on it, would swallow up any amount of time that’s given to us.

Even today, everyone hurries his life and suffers from a yearning for the future and weariness for the present. But the greatest hindrance to living was expectancy, which depends on tomorrow and wastes today. You thus disposed of that which lay in the hands of fate or fortune, while letting go of that which was in your own.

“Accordingly, he who gives all of his time on his own needs, who plans out his every day as if it neither were his last, nor longs for nor fears the morrow,” said the philosopher.

“Why do you delay”, Seneca asks in his essay On the Shortness of Life, “Why are you idle? Unless you seize the day, it flees. Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore you must vie with time’s swiftness in the speed of using it “.

Talking about the art of living, I remember what another worldly philosopher told about life. He was America’s first billionaire, J. Paul Getty (1872-1976). His classic book, “How to be Rich,” is very different from hundreds of other alternatives you find on the bookshop shelves, “How to get Rich.”

In Getty’s refined world, there’s a big difference between “being” rich and “getting” rich. For Getty, life is much more than simply working for a living. Far too many people are too busy and don’t take the time to enjoy all that life has to offer.

As the wise old Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang says, “Those who are wise won’t be busy, and those who are too busy can’t be wise.”

There is wisdom in Lin’s statement. If you are too busy in your work, you don’t have time to learn new ideas, to discover new truths, to enjoy life’s little pleasures, or perhaps to pick a winning deal! Meeting face to face with life’s challenges requires you to look in not-yet-troddened paths, and you need the free time to do it.

Getty wrote a whole book, “The Golden Age,” on the need for workaholic people to diversify into other gainful pursuits.

In Getty’s case, he developed a taste for paintings and other collectibles. He states, “I began developing other, non-business interests and engaging in a reasonably broad range of ‘extracurricular’ activities early in my career.

These have all had a profound salutary effect, for each helped generate enthusiasm for the next, and all added zest to life and, what is more, helped me be a better, more energetic and efficient businessman and a much more content and happy person.”

It’s funny how we often don’t practice what we preach. In “How to Be Rich,” Getty confesses that for much of his life he was a workaholic. “I still find it’s often necessary to work 16 to 18 hours a day, and sometimes around the clock.” His nonstop schedule led to serious personal and family problems.

Despite tremendous monetary success, Getty had one failure. He was married five times. “I deeply regret these marital failures,” he said, “but a woman doesn’t feel secure, contended or happy when she finds that her husband is thinking of his business interest first and foremost, and that she comes next - almost as an afterthought.”

Sounds like Getty should have read his own book, The Golden Age, about the need to spend more time with his wife and children and less time at the office.