XI. Living Long and Living Well Are Not the Same

A distinction Seneca returns to throughout his writing.

A person who lives to ninety is not necessarily someone who has had a long life. A person who dies at forty might have lived far longer in any sense that matters.

Do not think that just because someone has grey hair or wrinkles they have had a long life. They might have simply existed for a long time. That is different.

Think of a ship caught in a storm the moment it leaves port, blown around the same patch of sea for years, never going anywhere. Would you say that ship had made a long voyage? It spent years at sea. It covered almost no ground.

A life spent in distraction, in waiting, in serving other people's purposes, in being blown from one thing to the next without direction, is a life like that ship. Long in years. Short in distance traveled.

The length of a life and the depth of a life are different things. Years measure duration. Depth is measured by something else: by how present you were, how much you chose, how much of it was actually yours.