Life is Great When It's Ending | The Philosophy of Seneca

One day, Seneca visited his house in the countryside after a long absence. He was baffled about how his estate was crumbling, and the garden trees had lost all their leaves. He took it out on the landlord, who then explained that even though he did everything in his power to maintain the place, the trees and house were old. Bewildered about how fast his property had fallen apart, the reality of aging became apparent to Seneca.

“Wherever I turn, I see evidence of my advancing years,” he wrote to his friend Lucilius. The crumbling stones and the dying trees were proof of how all things decay and that he, himself, isn’t an exception to this rule. But instead of being depressed, Seneca decided to cherish old age, stating that it’s full of pleasure if one knows how to use it.

Two millennia after Seneca walked the earth, people are living longer lifespans, and many often worry about how to spend old age and how to cope with their reducing vitality. Is life worth living when you’re old? According to Seneca, it is. This video explores Seneca’s Stoic views on old age and how to enjoy the years we’ve got left.

How can anyone possibly enjoy getting older? After all, our bodies are disintegrating, our memory is getting worse by the day, and thus we cannot function the way we used to. Like children, we’re becoming increasingly dependent on other people, sometimes to the point we cannot wash ourselves anymore. How dreadful it is to fall apart, witnessing ourselves getting dragged away from the arena of life towards the dark pit of eternal non-existence.

It’s almost as if Fate has given us the best first and saved the worst for last; as if being young is to experience and being old to endure. In his work The Shortness of Life, Seneca wrote how he sees people clinging to life, wasting their time as if they were still young. He described an older man dying in the act of finally receiving his part of a long-delayed inheritance and another elder dying amid his duties.

It’s as if these people spent their days chasing trivialities like wealth and respect, sacrificing their limited time and inner tranquility to obtain these things. Seneca argued that old age has its enjoyments to offer, although they differ from when we were young. I quote:

“Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline. And I myself believe that the period which stands, so to speak, on the edge of the roof, possesses pleasures of its own. Or else the very fact of our not wanting pleasures has taken the place of the pleasures themselves. How comforting it is to have tired out one’s appetites, and to have done with them!”

End quote. When we’re young, we tend to chase after pleasures and achievements. Our vitality inclines us to establish ourselves in the world, procreate, and leave a mark. But such desires also have downsides: they make us restless, and acting upon them will cost us time and energy.

In his work The Shortness of Life, Seneca argues that by chasing external things like fame and wealth, people forget to live, and when their time has come, they realize they’ve spent their time chasing trivial things. During old age, many of these desires erode. As Seneca mentioned, we’re standing “on the edge of the roof.”

If we’re standing on the edge, knowing that we could fall anytime, we’re probably less interested in adding more money to our fortune or making sure all sorts of people we don’t even know pat us on the back. Most important in this situation is the ability to enjoy the time we’ve left. And, so argues Seneca, merely ceasing the desire for countless pleasures is pleasurable in itself.

I quote: “Let us cease to desire that which we have been desiring. I, at least, am doing this: in my old age I have ceased to desire what I desired when a boy. To this single end my days and my nights are passed; this is my task, this the object of my thoughts, – to put an end to my chronic ills.”

When entering old age, looking back at our younger years tends to evoke feelings of nostalgia. Life used to be beautiful and vibrant when we still had energetic, strong bodies. The world was our oyster, and we had a whole life ahead of us, with countless possibilities. But now, our lives have passed to a great extent.

We’ve made our choices, had our chances. Some things turned out to be as we expected; other things did not. But chances are most of us have accumulated a collection of life experiences (good and bad) when we reach old age. According to Seneca, the fact that we have lived is a reason for celebration on its own.

We’ve had happy, enjoyable moments to reflect on and for which we can be grateful. We may also have had painful periods of hardship, and we can be satisfied and proud we’ve managed to endure them. In his letter, Seneca wrote a few sentences about the legate and governor Pacuvius, who achieved ownership of the province of Syria.

Pacuvius regularly held a burial sacrifice in his own honor, complete with the usual funeral feasting. Accompanied by music and applause, his servants dragged him from the dining room to his quarters, singing: “He has lived his life, he has lived his life!” Inspired by the governor’s tradition, Seneca suggested reminding ourselves of the fact that we’ve lived the course Fortune has set for us.

I quote: “That man is happiest, and is secure in his own possession of himself, who can await the morrow without apprehension. When a man has said: ‘I have lived!’, every morning he arises he receives a bonus.”

End quote. Seneca wrote that we should live every day as if it’s our last, “as if it rounded out and completed our existence.” As we view our lives as a product of Fate, we realize that we haven’t come up short, and everything has been happening according to plan. We’re standing on the edge, awaiting the moment we fall into the depth, and every second Fate grants us is a win.

And when we fall, we can always say “I have lived” and face the abrupt ending with satisfaction. I quote: “I am endeavouring to live every day as if it were a complete life. I do not indeed snatch it up as if it were my last; I do regard it, however, as if it might even be my last.”

The inevitable conclusion of old age is death. But we often fear death; we’re anxious about the thought of falling off the edge into oblivion. As we all know, the eventual fall is inevitable; we just don’t know precisely when it happens.

During old age, time confronts us with the fact that the end comes nearer. We’re losing our vitality, our bodies decline, while, at the same time, younger, more vigorous generations are taking over. And so, we try to expand our youth, which may work for a while.

But, eventually, the degeneracy of age begins to burst at the seams. The depth following the fall off the edge becomes more robust, more visible, and daunting to many. It’s one thing to celebrate having lived; it’s another to embrace the fact that the life we celebrate is ending.

But to resist it means to defy fate. We can’t escape death, as it’s part of life. In a letter to Lucilius, Seneca proclaimed he was ready to depart. “Dying well means dying gladly,” Seneca stated, which doesn’t mean that he actively pursued death but that he cheerfully accepted his mortality.

His readiness, so he argued, relieved him of his anxiety, making him enjoy his life’s last chapters even more. Seneca urged never to do anything unwillingly. If we embrace fate no matter what, we’ll never do anything against our will, as we don’t want things to happen as we wish, but as they happen, death included.

I quote: “The man who does something under orders is not unhappy; he is unhappy who does something against his will. Let us therefore so set our minds in order that we may desire whatever is demanded of us by circumstances, and above all that we may reflect upon our end without sadness.”

Is Seneca telling us to give up on life then? He didn’t say that. He did say that we should be ready for death and embrace its coming, not to abandon the act of living but to relieve us from anxiety by accepting and embracing our limited time on Earth.

How can we celebrate that we’ve lived if we’re crippled by fear of the inevitable end? Moreover, the less time we’ve got left and the closer we come to death, the more reason we have to seize the day, as the chances of it being our last increase steadily.

Also, Seneca seems to advocate for a realistic attitude towards old age. There are many things we can’t do anymore and many we don’t even desire to do. We can accept our limitations and adapt ourselves to life’s circumstances, or we can make it a miserable experience by spending our last days beating our heads against a stone wall.

Old age grants us many opportunities, like the enjoyment of pleasant memories. We can find serenity in not having to go through many adversities and tribulations that come with life anymore; we’ve done that and survived. Having resigned from many things and having ceased desiring many others leaves the elderly an excellent opportunity to study philosophy.

Thank you for watching.