Daily Meditations · Sunday, July 12, 2026
On time
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. — Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
Seneca wrote this essay to his father-in-law Paulinus, who oversaw Rome's grain supply, one of the most demanding administrative jobs in the empire. His argument was not that life is tragically brief. It was that most people treat their time as if it were limitless, spending it on things they would never spend money on, and only notice its value when almost none remains.
The essay is uncomfortable because it doesn't let you blame circumstance. Seneca's claim is that the problem is rarely a lack of time. It's a lack of attention to where the time goes. We are generous with our hours in a way we would find absurd if they were coins, handing them to distractions and obligations we never actually chose.
If you tracked today's hours the way you track money, which expense would embarrass you?
