Seneca Moral essays
Seneca: Do I speak of our lives, which we know roll away…
Do I speak of our lives, which we know roll away incredibly fast? Reckon up the centuries of cities: you will find that even those which boast of their antiquity have not existed for long. All human works are brief and fleeting; they take up no part whatever of infinite time.
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Seneca’s moral essays. The reading beside it is ours.
We experience our own lives as enormous. The deadline, the reputation, the business, the family name—each can feel like the center of history. Zoom out, and even great cities, institutions, and empires occupy a brief moment. Seneca does not offer this perspective to make our efforts meaningless. He offers it to free us from inflated importance. The embarrassing mistake you made last week will not echo through eternity. Neither will the applause you are chasing. What matters is not building something that lasts forever; nothing human does. What matters is using your short share of time well: acting honorably, loving people, and doing work worth doing while you can. Let impermanence shrink vanity, not effort. Today, ask whether the thing consuming your anxiety deserves as much of your finite attention as you are giving it.
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