The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

by Robert Pantano

This is essential, not only because the future might not come, but because even if it does, if we remain stuck in a constant preparatory cycle, when it arrives, it’ll just be another moment to spend preparing and longing for further future moments. Seneca wrote: It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. New preoccupations take the place of the old, hope excites more hope and ambition more ambition. They do not look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it. For Seneca, to hope to live for oneself finally in the future is to wait until it’s too late. Rather, to make the most of time is to make the most of today. “Lay hold of today’s task and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s,” he wrote.