: The great Roman philosopher discusses the transience of life in letters to his friend Pauline.

Most mortals complain about the treachery of nature: we are born so briefly and the time allotted to us flies so soon that, with the exception of a few, we leave life before we have time to prepare for it properly.

No, not a little time we have, but a lot to lose.

Life has been given to us long enough, and it will be abundantly enough to accomplish the greatest things, if we distribute it wisely. But if it is not guided by a good goal, if our wastefulness and negligence allow it to flow between our fingers, then when our last hour strikes, we are surprised to find that life, the course of which we did not notice, has expired.

We are drowning in insatiable greed, in the bustle of fruitless activity, in drunkenness, laziness of vanity, money-grubbing and cowardice. There are people who are selflessly loyal to their superiors, who surrender themselves to voluntary slavery; many envy other people's wealth; most people do not pursue a specific goal, they are thrown from side to side by a shaky, unstable, self-opposed frivolity. Some are not attracted to anything at all, they see no guiding goal, and rock catches them in relaxing sleepy yawns.

Vices are crowding people from all sides, preventing them from raising their eyes and seeing the truth, dragging them to the bottom and binding them tightly to passions. A man is not able to free himself and recover.

Even if a deceased respite suddenly happens in life, the excitement in a person does not stop, as in the sea after a storm the waves continue for a long time, and he never knows a rest from his passions.

Look at those whose happiness makes everyone dizzy: they are suffocating under the weight of what they call blessings. They are oppressed by wealth, blood spoils the daily obligation to shine with intelligence and eloquence, their health goes away in endless pleasures, and an inexhaustible stream of customers deprives of rest, only nobody cares for themselves.

Any bright mind, at least once in a life illuminated by thought, will not tire of wondering at this strange clouding of human minds. None of us will allow us to invade our possessions and will take up stones and weapons, protecting our property; and in our life we ​​allow us to intervene unhindered, moreover, we ourselves invite future owners and stewards of our lives. There is no person who wants to share money with others, but how many each gives out his life!

Any old man from the crowd, take it to count how many days of his life he gave to creditors, girlfriends, a patron, clients; how much time was spent quarreling with his wife, punishing servants, running around on business and illness, in which he himself was guilty; how much time is spent just like that, without any benefit, he will see that he is much more years old than he actually lived. And if this old man counts the days when he executed his own decisions; the days that have passed as he outlined; days when he had himself, when there was no anxiety in the soul; and figure out how much of the real thing he managed to do, he will find that most of his life was stolen by strangers in pieces, and he did not understand what he was losing. Remembering how many empty disappointments, stupid joys, greedy aspirations, false loveless talk took away, the old man will realize that he did not live at all.

The thing is that you live, forgetting about your frailty, not noting how much your time has already passed. You rush them right and left, as if you had an inexhaustible supply of it, and yet, perhaps, the day that you are so generously giving to any person or business is the last.

You fear everything in the world like mortals, and you crave everything in the world like immortals.

You wish to retire at the age of fifty, to be freed from the rest of your duties from the age of sixty, but no one can guarantee that you will live to these years.

And besides, how are you not ashamed to devote for yourself only the miserable remnants of your own years, to leave for a good and intelligent life only time that is no longer suitable for anything else? What a foolish oblivion of one’s own mortality - to postpone common thinking until the age of fifty and intend to start life from the age to which few live!

Take a closer look: people, ascended to the heights of power and power, sometimes involuntarily sigh about the desired leisure and praise it so that you might think they would prefer it to everything they have. Often they dream of descending from their heights - if only they could be sure that they would survive; for excessive happiness falls under its own weight, even without external shock or attack from the side.

A busy person cannot learn anything properly, ‹...› because an absent-minded spirit doesn’t absorb anything deeply, as if spitting out everything that they are trying to force into it.

No science is harder for a busy person than living. Teachers of all other sciences as much as you want, but you need to learn to live all your life, and all your life you need to learn to die.

How many great husbands, leaving everything that hindered them, abandoning wealth, duties and pleasures, learned to live before old age: however, most of them passed away, admitting that they had not learned. What can we say about the others?

A truly great husband, rising above human error, will not allow you to take a minute of his time. His life is the longest because he was free for himself. He did not give up a single piece of time wallowing idle and uncultivated; I didn’t give the slightest share to someone else’s disposal and did not find things so wonderful that they should be exchanged for their own time. Therefore, his time was enough for him. But it cannot be enough for those whose life is pulled apart to pieces by strangers.

Do not think that they themselves do not begin sooner or later to understand what they have lost. Listen to the lucky ones, weighed down by success, and you will hear how often in the midst of some honorable-tiring fuss they exclaim: "They do not let me live."

Of course they don’t. Your life is taken by those who call you a lawyer, your time is being stolen by the accused, a candidate for an elected post, an old woman tired of burying her heirs, an imaginary patient who wanted to tease the greed of all who cried for his money, an overly high-ranking friend who considers you not as much as a friend, as much as a household item. Check your expenses and summarize the days of your life: you will see that you have only a few left - and then only those that are not useful to others.

One longed for it and finally got the post, but now he dreams of folding it. Another dreamed of arranging games and waited a long time for him to have a happy lot, and now he does not want to get rid of them. The third is a famous lawyer, always in great demand on the forum, wins any business that is taken, and is looking forward to a judicial vacation. Each rushes through his life headlong, consumed by longing for the future, languished by an aversion to the present.

He who uses his own advantage every moment of his time, who arranges every day as if it is his whole life, is waiting for tomorrow without hope and without fear.

He knows everything, everything he tasted and is now full. Other things, let fortune and order: his life is already in danger. Something else can be added to it, but nothing can be taken away. So, do not let gray hair and wrinkles make you think that a person has lived a long time: rather, he has been on the earth for a long time.

I never cease to be amazed to see how people are asking to give them time, while others without hesitation agree to do it. At the same time, those and others pay attention only to the subject for which they ask for time, and not one notices the time itself.

People pay the salary with their labor; no one evaluates time, it is used so casually as if it were received for nothing. But look at the same people when the threat of death looms over them: they are ready to give everything they have in order to live.

If everyone could accurately count the years remaining with him, then with what reverent thrift would those of us who have little left would relate to time. But even a small residue, if it is known exactly, is easy to dispose of; special thrift requires what can end at any moment.

Who can be dumber than people who show off their wise forethought? They are always busy and preoccupied: at the expense of their life, they arrange their life to make it better.

Putting something aside for the future is the worst way to waste your life: every day that comes is taken from you, you give away the present in exchange for a promise of the future.

Waiting is the main obstacle to life; it depends on tomorrow and destroys today. You are trying to control what is still in the hands of fortune, releasing what was in your own. But the future is unknown; live now!

The present is a moment so brief that some do not recognize its existence. It always moves forward at breakneck speed; passes without having time to step and does not tolerate a stop. For busy people, there is only this brief moment; however, even it is taken away from them, always busy with many things at the same time.

And when a disease or weakness reminds them of their mortality, with what fear they die, as if they are not leaving life, and someone forces them to tear them out of it. They regret not having lived before; swear, having recovered, to devote the rest of their life to leisure; and for the first time they come up with the idea that in their entire life they have only accumulated unnecessary good, which they will never have time to use.

For those whose life is far from worries, it is long, because it is not wasted, but brings a reliable income, therefore, no matter how short it is, it is enough. That is why the sage will go towards death with a firm step, whenever his last hour comes.

I am not only inviting busy people to those whom you forever see in a stampede among strangers; whom duties are driven out of their own home, forcing them to knock at other people's doors, or whom they are persecuted for dishonest gain. There are people who remain busy and at leisure. Their leisure is not a carefree life, but busy idleness.

None of those who are eternally busy satisfying their desires knows leisure.

Only people who have time for wisdom live rightly. They keep unspent not only their own years: they make their property all the years that have elapsed before them. It is for us that the glorified creators of the sacred teachings were born. We are led to dazzling treasures that were dug by another hand and carried out of darkness into the light.

As soon as we break the tight framework of human weakness, we will have at our disposal vast spaces of time for walks. Since the nature of things allows us to enter into communication with any age, why not turn our back on this insignificant, fleeting, transitional piece of time, which is called the present, to an immeasurable eternity, where we are together with the best of people?

Only those who daily turn to the great thinkers and artists of past centuries are engaged in genuine business. Anyone who comes to them will go away happy, inflamed for them with even greater love; at any time of the day or night, their doors are open to any mortal.

We often say that choosing parents is not in our power, that the lot of our birth is random. In fact, we are free to decide at our discretion where we are born. There are families of noblest minds and talents; choose which family you want to become a member of.

Thanks to adoption, you will become the heir to the family heritage, and you will not have to guard this wealth: it becomes more and more, the more people among whom it will be divided. Your new relatives will show you the way to eternity and help you climb to the top, from which it is impossible to fall.

This is the only way to extend our mortal age and turn it into immortality. The honors and monuments achieved by ambition are quickly crumbling; nothing can resist old age. But that which is sanctified by wisdom is invulnerable to old age; every century his fame grows, for the distant is easier to admire.

The sage’s life lasts a long time.

The sage is not bound by the laws of the human race; all ages serve him as a god. He retains the past in his memory; present uses; the future anticipates in advance. The combination of all times into one makes his life long.

The shortest and most hectic life is for people who do not remember the past, neglect the present, fear the future. When the end comes, the unfortunate too late realize that they have been busy all their lives, but have done nothing.

Sometimes they themselves cause death, but this does not mean that they have lived a long life. It’s just that they often don’t know what they want and are rushing just to what they are afraid of; and they call death precisely because they fear it more than anything else.

Complaints of many of them on exorbitantly long days are not considered a sign of longevity. They do not know how to manage their leisure, how to sustain it. And so they begin to search for themselves some occupations, and any break between them is a burden to them.

All their joys are mixed with fear and anxiety, because they are generated not by good reasons, but by the insignificant vanity that poisons them. But even if in moments of delight they cannot experience pure joy without an admixture of fear, then what should be the times that they themselves call unhappy?

The greater the good, the greater the anxiety associated with it; the fuller the happiness, the less you can rely on it.

Everything that got through luck is fragile; the higher the case raises, the easier it is to fall. But who will please that at any moment it can fall? This means that not only the shortest, but also the most miserable life is lived by people who, with great labor, earn their own blessings, the possession of which will require even greater labor from them. Meanwhile, the irrevocably elapsing time is not taken into account.

So break out of the whirlpool of people, dearest Pauline, return to the quiet harbor. You have been carried by the waves longer than it would be appropriate for your age. Believe me, in numerous works, cares and anxieties, you have completely proved your virtue; it's time to experience what she stands in her spare time. Let the greater and better part of your life be given to the state - but take at least some part of your time.

I do not call you to lazy and inactive rest, this is not what I call peace. Great things await you, and you will deal with them far from anxieties and human fuss.

You have earned yourself love by occupying a position in which you rarely manage to escape hatred. Nevertheless, it’s better to take stock of one’s own life than to procure state bread. Your spirit is full of life and vigor, so free it from service: it is honorable, but not suitable for a blissful life. Think about it: did you study free sciences from an early age in order to take care of the safety of many thousands of pounds of wheat now? No, they expected more and more from you.

Slow heavy carriers are much more suitable for the transport of goods than blood stallions; Who will drag gravity on thoroughbred horses?

Rather, drop it and go to business calm, safe, great! Proceed with the study of sacred, higher subjects - and you will find out what the matter of God is; what fate awaits your soul; where we will go, freed from the body; what kind of force makes the stars move in their own way; and much more,full of unimaginable miracles.

Right now, before strength is exhausted, we must go in search of the best! I offer you a life where numerous noble arts await you, love of virtue, forgetfulness of lust, knowledge of life and death, deep peace.

The fate of all busy people is worthy of pity, but the most miserable share went to those who are not even busy with their own affairs.

If those who fall asleep, adjusting themselves to someone else’s sleep, walk, adjusting to someone else’s step, love and hate at the behest, would like to know how short their lives are, they just need to figure out what part of it belongs to them.

People are ready to kill all their years so that only one is called by their name. Others do not have time to get to the peaks to which their ambition calls: life leaves them when they just started to make their way up. Others nevertheless break out to the heights of honor and glory, and only then they get the sad thought that all the hardships were carried by them only for the tombstone. Others confuse old age with youth, and decrepit forces cheat on them in the midst of new shamelessly grandiose enterprises.

Shame on those who die in the line of duty, tired of life before work!

This is how most people work: they struggle with bodily weakness with all their might, and old age itself is only a burden to them, which does not allow them to work.

But while they grab what is possible, do not give each other peace, make each other unhappy, life goes on, barren, joyless, useless to the soul. Nobody thinks about death, everyone goes far ahead in their hopes, and some run their plans completely on the other side of life, taking care of huge tombstones and a magnificent funeral procession. But they lived so little that they should have been buried by candlelight and torch.