“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”Seneca · Scrisori către Luciliu · 65 · Scrisoarea 1
Life isn't short; it's spent on time that was never ours.
Seneca uses an economic analogy: we are not poor, we are wasteful. Time is the only wealth distributed equally, yet most people spend it on things that are not theirs — inherited obligations, vanities, postponements. The mechanism is that life is shortened not by subtracted years but by unlived ones: a decade on autopilot does not count as a decade. The remedy is not longevity but ownership — keeping account of your own time, not other people's.
Why it matters For anyone who feels the years accelerating: usually the calendar is not at fault, but the fact that the days are not their own.