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:
- A day is the same as the others since it is comprised of the same 24 hours.
- Each day is the same, whether that day is within a week, a month, a year, and so on. We attribute certain qualities to specific days, such as birthdays, but in reality, that day isn’t different from the others.
- Within a day, we get up, do our work, eat, and then go to sleep. Humanity has followed a similar schedule since we began walking the earth. Our oldest ancestors and our future descendants had and will experience that same day.
This can lead us to conclude that a single day encloses time itself. Stoicism and other philosophies have a similar concept: the current day is the only time that we truly possess. The present is all that matters.
Since a single day encloses time, it also means that when the day ends, our existence ends as well. This sounds nihilistic, implying that nothing matters since life ends when we go to sleep. But isn’t it the opposite? When something’s end is near, doesn’t that fact make it more precious? If we think that our our existence will end, wouldn’t that make us appreciate what we did during the day?
The proper way to think before we go to sleep, according to Seneca is:
Let us go to our sleep with joy and gladness; let us say:
I have lived; the course which Fortune set for me is finished.
Take into account what happened in your day. Were there words you should have spoken, actions you should have taken? Can you leave your life now, knowing that you have lived well?
And if you wake up the following morning, be thankful, as you have just gotten a “bonus” day! This alone should make you wake up with gladness as another chance to live your life has been given. Will you live in accordance to your purpose, will you rise to the occasion?
On Old Age
Of course, it is very likely that we wake up and get to see another day. As we get more of these “bonus” days, eventually we realize that we have aged. Our minds see a different reality than our body.
Should we then despair that our lives are truly coming to an end? Seneca thinks otherwise:
Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it.
Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline.
“How can getting old be full of pleasure? I can no longer do the things I used to!”, you may protest. But does the diminishing capabilities of our bodies provide no other advantage?
Or else the very fact of our not wanting pleasures has taken the place of the pleasures themselves. How comforting it is to have tired out one’s appetites, and to have done with them!
When you can no longer party until past midnight, when your mind tires easily, doesn’t that free up additional time for yourself? You can get more hours of rest and sleep. Now you are able to think things deeper as you no longer need to zap around between things that interest you.
At the end of your day, when your bed calls to you, reflect on what transpired. If you can go to sleep knowing that you lived your day to the best of your ability, when you have done your part in this world (however small), you can rest content. You can truly say, “I have lived“.