Don’t Rush Through This
Syed Faisal Abbas Tirmize
CFO & A Sustainability Mentor at MAFHH An Institution
You look around and you see people rushing everywhere. Rushing through traffic. Rushing to get their kids down to bed. Rushing through work to get to the weekend. No time to talk. No time to sit. There is too much to do. There is somewhere to go, and the faster the better.
This was as true in the ancient world as it is today. In Rome, people were rushing to get their mail, rushing to win the next public office, rushing to the next round of games in the Coliseum, rushing to their next big accomplishment. Or at least that’s what they thought…
Seneca makes the point, however, that what we are really rushing towards—with all deliberate speed—is death. That’s what he means when he says that we get death wrong. Death is not some distant thing in the future, not some one-time thing that looms ahead. Instead, death is something happening to you right now. It’s happening as you read this email (hope it’s been worth it!), it’s happening as you struggle to put your daughter’s shoes on so you can drop her off at school and then it’s happening still more as you sit down to that coffee meeting you rushed to even though you didn’t want to have it in the first place. It happens as you procrastinate, it happens as you distract yourself, it happens as you make bad choices, it happens as you worry and dread and whine.
The time that passes, Seneca reminds us, is death. It belongs to death. You’ll never get to live that has been lived again. So why are you rushing? Why are you thinking about the future at the expense of the present? Why aren’t you showing up to the right here and right now?
But no season reminds of the possibility of rebirth, of a chance for life to start anew—afresh afresh, afresh, as we said earlier this month—than spring. After the long hibernation of winter, it’s a time to reset, to reassess. A patient time to plant seeds in the form of better habits and better routines so that you can reap what you sowed come summer and fall with more meaningful relationships and success and contentment.
And that’s why we created The Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. It’s a set of ten brand-new actionable challenges designed to push you to examine your choices, your relationships, and your day-to-day patterns and move you closer to living your best life.
“Remember how long you’ve been putting this off,” Marcus Aurelius writes, “how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them.” He reminds us “that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.”
Don’t rush through life, don’t rush toward death. Use the time assigned to you and sign up for The Spring Forward Challenge NOW at dailystoic.com/spring! Challenge starts March 19!