Is Life Too Short – Or Are We Just Wasting It?

See what you make of this quote from Nathaniel Branden’s book “Six Pillars of Self-Esteem”:

“No one is coming to save you; no one is coming to make life right for you; no one is coming to solve your problems. If you don’t do something, nothing is going to get better.

The dream of a rescuer who will deliver us may offer a kind of comfort, but it leaves us passive and powerless.

We may feel if only I suffer long enough, if only I yearn desperately enough, somehow a miracle will happen, but this is the kind of self-deception one pays for with one’s life as it drains away into the abyss of unredeemable possibilities and irretrievable days, months, decades.”

When I was burning out in the police, no-one was coming to save me.

In the years since I walked out of that familiar blue (and often broken) gate, I’ve occasionally wondered if I made the right decision.

Was it just a short-term storm that I could have weathered?

Would things have improved?

Clearly, I’ll never truly know, but as I’ve consistently heard from people repeating the same issues – not to mention the enormous, relentless media coverage of negative police culture in recent times – it seems probable that I’d still be sat there waiting for that miracle or saviour. A lottery win, when I hadn’t even bought a ticket.

Now, I consider leaving one of my best ever decisions.

Same again for deciding whether to pursue the corporate promotion path or strike out and follow the entrepreneurial spark.

To stay or to go, what is best for me, what is best for those around me, the meaning of it all.

None of these are new questions to be facing – ancient Greek and Roman thinkers and philosophers were wrestling with the same concepts, and you may well have already recognised this as what we’d likely group as Stoicism. It is, but again I think it’s worth investigating that term a little closer.

Being “stoic”, especially in the kind of traditional and hierarchical cultures we find in uniformed services, education, sport, engineering, manufacturing and so on, conjures ideas of stern-faced grit and resistance. It’s the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, it’s the Michael Jordan “flu game”, it’s Terry Butcher with his head bandaged in Stockholm and any other against-all-odds* tale of self-sacrifice in the name of honour, duty and virtue.

*Not including listening to the Phil Collins song of the same name. Although, it’s possible a decent number of those 300 might still have preferred to take their chances against the Persians, to be fair. Especially if faced with the Westlife and Mariah Carey version.

In my opinion though, that’s a simplistic view of what Stoicism is trying to tell us.

Seneca famously published a piece of work called “De Brevitate Vitae” – usually translated as “On the Shortness of Life.” However, his point is not so much that life is short, but that we waste it. He suggests that we have time to do what is necessary and important if we recognise and act on the present moment, rather than following distraction and blaming external influences for our struggles.

And he wasn't even being distracted by social media.

Time is the greatest resource, yet the one we often respect least. That’s closer to Seneca’s key point, but it doesn’t make such a catchy headline. Where he does then align with the rest of the key Stoic themes is around how we should be spending that precious time: acting consciously in line with our values, being aware of the present moment and mindful to everything it is telling us; recognising that anything tangible is merely borrowed and all we truly own is our response to life.

As Denzel Washington may or may not have said:

“You never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.”

You can’t take it with you.

So maybe setting a countdown alarm on your phone for a pension that’s due to arrive in 20 years from now is a bit odd.

Assuming you make it.

Assuming you last long enough to enjoy it.

Those aren’t meant to be morbid or disrespectful comments, not in the slightest – it’s exactly because I’ve seen people dedicate their lives (and those of their families) to a golden ending that never arrived.

Making Change Happen

I'm not suggesting that the right decision is always to walk away from stressful situations - sometimes the action required might be fight rather than flight.

I’m not saying that nothing is worth waiting for, nor that we always need to be striving hard for something newer, bigger, bolder. The mindfulness element is about celebrating the small wins along the way, allowing every feeling in, offering it a cup of tea and letting it stay a while, doing absolutely nothing sometimes. If you’re happy just where you are, that’s great. Bask in it.

I'm highlighting that when we want a change, we often wait for a stimulus so huge and clear that it makes the decision for us. This is usually because of fear of the unknown, fear of making a leap of faith.

Maybe fear of looking like a berk.

Making that leap requires you to accept that you are going to be unsure, you're going to be stepping outside your comfort zone and only you will be responsible for the consequences.

On the flip side, you also realise that in making such a leap, you control your fate and therefore your success, health, happiness. You create something only you can own and shape.

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