This isn’t a new idea, of course. Back in the days in which Christ was first telling the Good Samaritan story, his contemporary in ancient Rome Seneca the philosopher was begging his followers to stop and smell the roses. “Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future,” he wrote.75 For people who don’t appreciate life, time is “reckoned very cheap … in fact without any value,” he lamented. “These people do not know how precious time is.”
