“We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.”Seneca · Despre scurtimea vieții · 49 · capitolul 2
Life isn't short by nature; we make it short by wasting it.
The line reverses responsibility: brevity is not a sentence received but a result produced. The mechanism is that of accounting — life is an estate of days, and the wasteful one exhausts it through pointless spending, just as a rich heir ends up with nothing. A concrete example: someone who sacrifices health and relationships for money, then spends the money recovering health and repairing loneliness.
Why it matters It is a practical warning for anyone postponing what matters: the budget of days is finite, and waste is a decision, not a fate.