Reflections on Seneca’s Letters: Letter 1 (Time)

Reflections while reading Seneca

I had a dream of a father burying his son in Africa, after the son is turned into glue. My association is that a horse gets turned into glue when he is old. In this way I feel marked by the death of my mother so severely that my father buries me in my dream, death having made me an old man, even older than him.

The stoic is talking about time being easily taken away, and death being our memories behind us. I have been so severely marked by stress and death that I am desperate to change this situation.

I think I am becoming successful, reading the stoics. How much time do I spend stressed? Too much time. I am determined to not let time slip away by irrational worries, unable to take a hold of my own mind. There is always something to be in pain about, I am determined to become Virtuous, to act in a way which will make me no longer a slave to the possibility of annihilation.

It is not the annihilation itself, but the time spent worrying which makes an old man out of the worrier.