Seneca’s life is worth considering for whoever feels like they’ve missed their one shot often believe that it might probably be “too late.” Seneca was hit by a devastating blow of tuberculosis at the beginning of his twenties, just when his career as a lawyer began.
His doctors went as far as sending him to Egypt, where he lived for over ten years trying to get better. Even as many suspected that his window had closed, and he was going to meet his maker, he later returned to Rome and was renowned as a politician and a philosopher.
Then, when his career began, he was falsely banished to a place called Corisca, by jealous rivals. He spent eight difficult years on an island far from his home, eight years of his life’s prime.
And yet, he once again returned to Rome, reconstructed and restored himself, and quickly got hold of a dominant role, advising the emperor. Advising one of the most powerful men in the world.
You may be getting a sense of where that is headed, but no, he didn’t settle there.
He was again forced to retire from service to the emperor even at the height of his power because the emperor became more unstable.
Yet again, Seneca succeeded in devoting himself to philosophy and writing some of his best historical works.
What Seneca’s struggles reveal is something more plainly phrased from a viral video that was released by Gary Vaynerchuk, “You’ve Got F**king Time.”
It may appear like you’re too old to think that things didn’t go as you had expected and that bad luck must’ve ruined you entirely. And who knows, that might be the case. But as long as you’re still breathing, you’ve still got time.
You can still make something out of this life. And you should very much be grateful for whatever and how much longer you have left.
Because look at it this way: what if you finally woke up after a year or even much longer duration of coma? What if you’ve just been released from death row and exonerated? What if you had learned that your long term cancer could be cured?
Could you have said, “I got a late start.” Or would you say, “I’m so lucky? This is the start of something new for me.”
Remember, it’s not too late as far as life as we know it keeps going.
Source: Daily Stoic
We post stoic articles like this every week. If you want to be the first to get a notification when next we post another, do consider hitting the subscribe button to get email notifications.
0 Comments