3-2-1: On the shortness of life, what mastery requires, and how to overlap the things you love

To say that my life is too short is to say not only that I will die but also that I am anxious to lead a flourishing life: to bring my time into focus and respond in practice to the question of what makes my life worth living.

But learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die. So many of the finest men have put aside all their encumbrances, renouncing riches and business and pleasure, and made it their one aim up to the end of their lives to know how to live. Yet most of these have died confessing tha

“This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live,” lamented Seneca, the Roman philosopher, in a letter known today under the title On the Shortness of Life.

By trying too hard to make the most of his time, he misses his life.