I love working out and I love reading and I love doing both at the same time!
This month, I’m reading an edition of Seneca’s completed letters on Stoic philosophy while doing my cardio.
Seneca the Younger was born c. 4 B.C. in Corduba, Spain. He worked as Nero’s tutor and, as Nero grew older, he continued to work in the court until he fell out of favor. He was implicated in the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 C.E. and was forced to commit suicide that year.
In addition to these letters, Seneca wrote tragedies, treatises and a charming work called the Apocolocyntosis, or the “pumpkinization of Claudius.” The Apocolocyntosis is a parody of the practice of deifying an emperor after his death. The title is a play on the term apotheosis, which means deification, or the transformation from being a man to being a god. Instead of becoming deified, Claudius is pumpkinified or turned to a “pumpkin-head” which meant “stupid head.”
Seneca wrote the letters to Lucilius in the later part of his life. The original letters did not have titles, but often translated editions will provide them for context. The title given to Letter 33 in my edition: “On the Futility of Learning Maxim.”
The title piqued my own interest because of my own feelings about maxims. I get annoyed when someone gives me advice and it sounds like a clichéd idiom. I feel that life is too complicated for such sayings, and usually decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis.
Furthermore, you can usually find two resonant sayings or pieces of advice that directly contradict one another. I am at a transition period in my life. I am hearing both that “Life is short!” and “You are young and have your whole life ahead of you!” So, should I slow down and enjoy my time, or should I seize the day? I don’t know, I am trying to strike a happy balance and ignore maxims. These were my own impressions on the title, however, and not the point that Seneca is trying to get at.
Seneca warns against memorizing maxims to no effect without producing anything oneself. In his previous letters to Lucilius, Seneca had been concluding with quotes, often from the “rival camp” of Epicurus. He had treated the quotations as obligatory, but hereafter he stops providing them.
Why the sudden cessation of a practice to which he had recently expressed such obligation? He says that there comes a point where it is time to stop reading and studying and to start producing.
I am at that point in my own career. I have spent the past four years gathering information for qualifying exams and reading non-stop. I now must pivot into output. It is time for me to make my mark on the world instead of just consuming. I’ll never stop consuming information and literature, and I want to experience as much of the world as possible, but the direction can no longer be one way. Thank you to my readers for being willing to read what I write, and let me know how you balance input and output in your own life!