What is the measure of whether someone has truly lived? Is it based on the number of birthdays that person celebrated? Is it the amount of wealth one was able to accumulate? Or perhaps how well-traveled a person is?
In Seneca’s letter, On Old Age, he referred to Heraclitus that said:
“One day is equal to every day“. This can be interpreted in several ways:
At work, I was trying to figure out performance issues in our application. To aid in finding out the root cause, I analyzed our monitoring tools and found that our application transaction times had “spikes” throughout the day.
These can indicate potential problems such as:
What does it mean to be self-sufficient? According to the dictionary, it is defined as “needing no outside help in satisfying one’s basic needs”, or “emotionally and intellectually independent”. Self-sufficiency means we are not dependent on others to fulfil our needs, both physically and emotionally. If we strive to be like this, does that mean we should no longer need others?
In Seneca’s letter On Philosophy and Friendship, he asked the question: Does a self-sufficient person need friends? If someone is already emotionally and intellectually independent, what would friendship bring to that person’s life?
Sisyphus was a wise and cunning man, whose crime is that he went against the ancient gods of Greece. Whether or not his actions are justified is another story, but in the end, he was prosecuted by those in power and judged through their laws. As punishment, he was tasked to push a huge rock towards the top of a hill.
The rock isn’t an ordinary object though, as we are talking about ancient gods here. The real punishment is that once he reaches the top, Sisyphus always loses his grip and the rock falls back down into the bottom. He then has to carry the rock towards the top, and the same thing happens over and over again for all eternity.
I heard an anecdote about someone’s experience while in college. One of their classmates, who is into Buddhism, went into class wearing monk robes. It definitely stood out because in their country, Buddhism isn’t commonly practiced. They pondered about the purpose of wearing the robes in a place where it is not the norm. What do they want to accomplish by standing out?
Epictetus, in his letter On the Philosopher’s Mean, writes about this exact thing.