"Time is not a short time, but we waste a lot of it" (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

All the times we waste time. And then we complain because we don't have enough of it.

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DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME
How much time do we really have at our disposal? And how much of it do we waste? Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a revolutionary philosopher from the point of view of thought. Even regarding life, the time that flees and we can never grasp, of time that passes and overwhelms us under the avalanche of brevity.

– Time is not short and short. An entire literature, from the Greeks to the Romans, was inspired by this concept: life is short, time passes very quickly, we must seize the moment. Seneca, however, in an extraordinary text, not coincidentally entitled The brevity of life, which we recommend reading in the Einaudi paperback edition, reverses the paradigm. He writes: "In reality, it's not true that we have little time; rather, we waste a lot of it. The life we've been given is long enough to accomplish great things, provided it's spent well; but if it's squandered in luxury and idleness, if it's not used usefully, only when we reach the inevitable end do we realize that it's passed almost without us noticing."

  • We waste time when we enter in the racetrack of life, where everything flows quickly, in a breathless chase of a eternalthe presentSeneca's modernity is very powerful. In the age of haste, of always running, of being trapped in time, the great philosopher shows us a tailor-made antidote for living to the fullest meaning of this verb: don't waste time. Give meaning to life, every day, with the passion and energy of those who have the ambition to leave a mark, even the smallest. Seneca writes: "Life is not short at all; we make it so."
  • We waste time When we obsessively pursue the same things: wealth, career, trivial pursuits. This hypnotic state can last a lifetime, but if interrupted early, the surprise it evokes can be searing, because we come to realize that life has moved on, but we haven't lived it to the fullest, as we could have.
  • We waste time When we lose our battle with technology, we don't control it, we are dominated by it. This is demonstrated by the number of hours we spend on social media, email, playing video games, or even interrogating artificial intelligence. It's all too much, a sign of a waste of precious time.
  • We waste time When we become absorbed in constant commitments, which no longer allow us to freely dispose of it, time is no longer ours, but becomes the property of others, and we can't even ask ourselves why we gave up.
  •  We waste time when we insist on convincing people who do not know how to listen, they are devoid of lightness, And they don't even consider the possibility of having a doubt. It's not even worth trying, and the best idea is to humorously address it, inviting our stubborn interlocutor to "turn off the light when they're done speaking."
  • We waste time when there we complain in vain, we transform sweet nostalgia into sterling regret, we imagine the future only through the lenses of an excruciating

Ultimately, it is the waste of time, not its essence, that makes us perceive it as short.

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