On the Shortness of Life

On the Shortness of Life

Sextus Turannius was ninety years old when he finally got the thing he had waited for his entire adult life.

He was a Roman civil servant, overseeing the empire's grain supply. Meticulous, reliable, tireless, by reputation. For decades he waited on ships, counted warehouses, reconciled lists. Then one day the emperor let him go. Retirement. Freedom. Exactly what most of us daydream about at half past four, staring at a screen.

Turannius went home, lay down on his bed, and gathered his household. Then he asked them to mourn him. Not symbolically. An actual funeral rite took place in his own house, over a living man. And it did not stop until his office was given back to him.

The man died two thousand years ago, and his story is uncomfortably familiar. Turannius was no fool. He knew what many of us suspect about ourselves and never say out loud: if you take our busyness away, there is nothing underneath it. No person, no life. Just an empty morning we have no idea what to do with.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca wrote that scene down because he wanted it to hurt. He is after three questions, and they are ours too. Why does time feel scarce when we are actually given plenty of it? What do decades of busyness do to a person? And what do we do if inner calm cannot be bought, forced, or waited out?

One thing is worth knowing up front. This volume is not one piece of writing but three. The title essay on wasted time, a letter of consolation written from exile to Seneca's mother, and a long conversation about peace of mind. The same thought runs through all three, lit from a different angle.