You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.
A lot of the rest seems like self-contradictory mumbo jumbo -- which may just mean that I don't understand it. But it both implores you to spend your time on that which is important and also dismisses having material ambition. There are good points to such ideas, but, bereft of context, it really tells me nothing.
Since we are just dancing on this earth for a short time, what is wrong with taking some time to enjoy life, to smell the roses? If we prefer that to seeking great accomplishments and we are all just dust in the wind, we can decide which we prefer, can we not?
(Edit: And now my own comment doesn't make sense, because I can't make sense of what Seneca wrote. What "great accomplishments" does he value? He seems to simultaneously implore people to be ambitious workaholics and lambaste them for the same.)
Edit #2: If it makes any difference to how people interpret my above remarks: I spent about a year at death's door. I am nearly 50 years old and have a condition with a life-expectancy in the 30's. I have been living under sentence of death a long time. If you don't enjoy life at least a little here and there, if it is nothing but unremitting misery, seriously, give me death.
> But it both implores you to spend your time on that which is important and also dismisses having material ambition.
The sentence you quoted struck me also, but I don't see it as dismissing ambition of any kind. I once had the mentality of accepting being miserable and rationalizing it for future rewards. I forgot to appreciate and enjoy what I have, and thus my happiness forever resided in the future. But a person can have happiness in the present while still working for the future.
Perhaps a mistake to say it, but, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it's all just a simulation in 4d anyway. At some point, the universe implodes back upon itself and everything will be gone. So, ultimately, it kind of doesn't actually matter one way or the other.
Which means we can kind of do what we want, decide what we most value, if we so choose.
I do the things I do because a) "Everyone needs a vocation" (if you have read the play The importance of being Earnest, you might understand that to mean "We all have to keep ourselves occupied somehow between now and the time we die", which is how I mean it) and b) while I see no particular moral imperative to "elevate mankind," it's fun to work on solving hard problems and work on opening up opportunities that can't exist without that "elevation." More complex things emerge from less complex underpinnings and then things can get interesting.
I have to be here anyway (unless I commit suicide). Might as well spend that time doing interesting things that I feel okay about. Because while my body is dust in the wind and, someday, even this solar system will no doubt be dust in some galactic wind, my quality of life -- my experience of it -- matters to me. And a lot of that stuff that people call "wisdom" or "virtue" has a proven track record of improving my own contentment.
/talking in public before lunch, usually a mistake
You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.
A lot of the rest seems like self-contradictory mumbo jumbo -- which may just mean that I don't understand it. But it both implores you to spend your time on that which is important and also dismisses having material ambition. There are good points to such ideas, but, bereft of context, it really tells me nothing.
Since we are just dancing on this earth for a short time, what is wrong with taking some time to enjoy life, to smell the roses? If we prefer that to seeking great accomplishments and we are all just dust in the wind, we can decide which we prefer, can we not?
(Edit: And now my own comment doesn't make sense, because I can't make sense of what Seneca wrote. What "great accomplishments" does he value? He seems to simultaneously implore people to be ambitious workaholics and lambaste them for the same.)
Edit #2: If it makes any difference to how people interpret my above remarks: I spent about a year at death's door. I am nearly 50 years old and have a condition with a life-expectancy in the 30's. I have been living under sentence of death a long time. If you don't enjoy life at least a little here and there, if it is nothing but unremitting misery, seriously, give me death.