Letter 70: On the proper time to slip the cable
After a long space of time, I have seen your beloved Pompeii. I was thus brought again face to face with the days of my youth. And it seemed to me that I could still do, nay, had only done a short time ago, all the things which I did there when a young man. We have sailed past life, Lucilius, as if we were on a voyage, and just as when at sea, to quote from our poet Vergil,
“Lands and towns are left astern,”
even so, on this journey where time flies with the greatest speed, we put below the horizon first our boyhood and then our youth, and then the space which lies between young manhood and middle age and borders on both, and next, the best years of old age itself. Last of all, we begin to sight the general bourne of the race of man.
Fools that we are, we believe this bourne to be a dangerous reef; but it is the harbor, where we must someday put in, which we may never refuse to enter; and if a man has reached this harbor in his early years, he has no more right to complain than a sailor who has made a quick voyage. For some sailors, as you know, are tricked and held back by sluggish winds, and grow weary and sick of the slow-moving calm; while others are carried quickly home by steady gales.
You may consider that the same thing happens to us: life has carried some men with the greatest rapidity to the harbor, the harbor they were bound to reach even if they tarried on the way, while others it has fretted and harassed. To such a life, as you are aware, one should not always cling. For mere living is not a good, but living well.
After a long space of time, I have seen your beloved Pompeii. I was thus brought again face to face with the days of my youth. And it seemed to me that I could still do, nay, had only done a short time ago, all the things which I did there when a young man. We have sailed past life, Lucilius, as if we were on a voyage, and just as when at sea, to quote from our poet Vergil,
“Lands and towns are left astern,”
even so, on this journey where time flies with the greatest speed, we put below the horizon first our boyhood and then our youth, and then the space which lies between young manhood and middle age and borders on both, and next, the best years of old age itself. Last of all, we begin to sight the general bourne of the race of man.
Fools that we are, we believe this bourne to be a dangerous reef; but it is the harbor, where we must someday put in, which we may never refuse to enter; and if a man has reached this harbor in his early years, he has no more right to complain than a sailor who has made a quick voyage. For some sailors, as you know, are tricked and held back by sluggish winds, and grow weary and sick of the slow-moving calm; while others are carried quickly home by steady gales.
You may consider that the same thing happens to us: life has carried some men with the greatest rapidity to the harbor, the harbor they were bound to reach even if they tarried on the way, while others it has fretted and harassed. To such a life, as you are aware, one should not always cling. For mere living is not a good, but living well.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 70
Though I still catch myself reaching for it regularly, I do try to avoid using the analogy of life as a voyage. This is not because it isn’t fitting, which it most certainly can be, but rather because it has become so hackneyed, and we have made it all the more confusing with the addendum of how it is the journey that counts, not the destination.
While happiness is hardly a place, or even a state, we are misguided when we fail to seek progress, or deny that there is any ultimate aim or purpose. There is most certainly an end to the trip, in that it has both a goal and a termination.
Many things will pass away, and many new ones will take their place, and finally there will be a conclusion to all the rushing about. I am often tempted to think with nostalgia about the vitality of my youth, yet then I remember why the departure of what was then is a condition for the awareness that is now. The number of years, and whether I desired more or less time, is quite secondary to my love of living with integrity, not whether I came to it sooner or later.
If it is death I fear, approaching the harbor will fill me with anxiety, but if it is character I seek, I will be glad to have undertaken the passage with excellence. I can recall the parties, or the vacations, or the romantic moments I never wanted to end, and it sadly meant I was fixated on the quantity over the quality: the beauty is in the depth of the experience, where each instance is complete, and so is not increased by stretching out the duration.
Within such a context, this letter turns to an uncomfortable topic, about when it might be the right time to die, and more specifically about whether what we call a suicide, however broadly or narrowly we choose to employ the term, is ever justified.
I will be sorely disappointed, however, if I expect Seneca to provide me with a quick-fix solution, easy to parrot but short on any genuine understanding. Instead, the many examples he offers will point to the necessity of guiding principles on what truly defines a good life, and how the circumstances of life and death relate to that intention.
If I do not begin with a reflection on why I am here, I cannot properly consider how long I should bother to stay.
While happiness is hardly a place, or even a state, we are misguided when we fail to seek progress, or deny that there is any ultimate aim or purpose. There is most certainly an end to the trip, in that it has both a goal and a termination.
Many things will pass away, and many new ones will take their place, and finally there will be a conclusion to all the rushing about. I am often tempted to think with nostalgia about the vitality of my youth, yet then I remember why the departure of what was then is a condition for the awareness that is now. The number of years, and whether I desired more or less time, is quite secondary to my love of living with integrity, not whether I came to it sooner or later.
If it is death I fear, approaching the harbor will fill me with anxiety, but if it is character I seek, I will be glad to have undertaken the passage with excellence. I can recall the parties, or the vacations, or the romantic moments I never wanted to end, and it sadly meant I was fixated on the quantity over the quality: the beauty is in the depth of the experience, where each instance is complete, and so is not increased by stretching out the duration.
Within such a context, this letter turns to an uncomfortable topic, about when it might be the right time to die, and more specifically about whether what we call a suicide, however broadly or narrowly we choose to employ the term, is ever justified.
I will be sorely disappointed, however, if I expect Seneca to provide me with a quick-fix solution, easy to parrot but short on any genuine understanding. Instead, the many examples he offers will point to the necessity of guiding principles on what truly defines a good life, and how the circumstances of life and death relate to that intention.
If I do not begin with a reflection on why I am here, I cannot properly consider how long I should bother to stay.
—Reflection written in 8/2013
IMAGE: J.M.W. Turner, Fishing Boats Entering Calais Harbor (c. 1803)
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