When people advise me to embrace a balanced lifestyle, I’m always interested in hearing the details. What do they mean by “balanced”? Do they mean that I should allocate equal time to work, sleep and play? Or that I should balance out my interests or my friends, and devote equal time to each of them?
In his writings, Seneca often repeated his recommendation to achieve a balanced life. We can find this call for balance in a few Letters to Lucilius, and in his essay “On the Shortness of Life.”
I would describe Seneca’s definition of “balance” as quasi-mathematical. His exhortation to achieve a balanced lifestyle is accompanied by a strong admonition against wasting time. He is urging us to increase useful activities and decrease worthless ones by the same amount.
As examples of wasteful activities, Seneca names the time spent on trivialities and entertainment, the pursuit of popularity and the pursuit of a high social status.
Instead, Seneca urges us to devote more time to learning and practising philosophy. In modern terms, I would translate his advice into acquiring new skills, and pursuing personal development, self-improvement and spiritual harmony.
How Seneca defined a balanced life
Seneca’s advice to achieve a balanced life has become very popular, but when we look into the details, his formula doesn’t add up. His recipe is imprecise, and leaves too many questions unanswered.
For instance: Why does Seneca condemn entertainment as a waste of time? Why does he view meditation or contemplation as great? Why should we give priority to skills acquisition over productivity improvement? Why is Seneca against the pursuit of an ambitious career?
Instead of giving solid answers, Seneca reminds us that life is short and that we should use our time wisely. His repetitions though fail to add clarity to his advice.
In the Letters to Lucilius, there are passages where Seneca’s advice to lead a balanced life becomes outright questionable. I am referring to his exhortations to live in poverty.
Why did Seneca view wearing cheap clothes, eating coarse bread, and enduring deprivations as an advisable lifestyle”? I’m unable to see any philosophical benefits in the prescription that he gives on the 18th Letter to Lucilius.
Overall, Seneca viewed a comfortable lifestyle as artificial excess, and advised people to steer away from luxury. He regarded the lifestyle of a pauper as the path to virtue, and deprivation as self-sufficiency.
Seneca’s views compared to St Benedict’s
It seems to me that the only ones who’ve followed Seneca’s advice to the letter are medieval monks like St. Benedict (480-547 AD). Within the Catholic Church, St Benedict created the Benedictine Order to implement his prescription for a lifestyle of prayer, which provides, in its own way, a form of balance.
St. Benedict’s lifestyle prescription is known as “The Rule of St. Benedict” and is meant to govern the existence of monks in minute detail. Its quasi-mathematical precision goes beyond Seneca’s exhortations to use our time wisely.
Seneca condemned trivial entertainments as time-wasting activities. St Benedict went a step further and filled every hour of the day with work and prayer, so that there is no time left for entertainment.
If we spend all day on personal development (whatever that means), we are achieving a balanced life according to Seneca; and if we spend the day labouring in the fields and praying in the chapel, we will have achieved a balanced life according to St Benedict.
The problem is that those prescriptions are unlikely to make us happy. In the Letters to Lucilius, Seneca devotes more space to condemning ambition than to explaining how to pursue happiness; and in The Rule of St Benedict, the daily routine is so boring that it will repel most religious postulants.
In his calls for balance and poverty, Seneca seems to have forgotten the purpose of life, namely, happiness. The Rule of St Benedict is offering postmortem heavenly rewards, but those seem too uncertain to compensate for years of boredom.
Seneca’s views compared to Aristotle’s
Aristotle (384-322 BC) in his “Nicomachean Ethics” told us to pursue virtue as a path to happiness. In modern terms, I would include personal development within virtue. Aristotle correctly viewed virtue as a method, not as a goal in itself. For him, the goal of life remains happiness.
I am afraid that Seneca got lost in his quest for a balanced life, and forgot the point of studying philosophy. His emphasis on poverty and deprivation does not make any sense; and his love for meditation seems to be a form of virtue signalling.
St Benedict was more specific than Seneca in describing his prescription for “a balanced lifestyle,” but I doubt that his way of life will attract many people nowadays. Individuals who feel attracted by a strict routine of work and prayer are few and far between.
In contrast to Seneca and St Benedict, I regard poverty as a burden, as something unpleasant to be overcome through work and achievement. My definition of “time-wasting activities” is diametrically opposed to those of Seneca and St Benedict.
I see more potential in thoughtful, ambitious work than in meditation, and more happiness in good entertainment than in endless labour.
Were Seneca and St Benedict wrong in their prescriptions? I think that they had good intentions, but they just did not know any better. Luckily, we can still rely on Aristotle to point us in the right direction, that is, to behaviour that leads to happiness.
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “Asymmetry: The shortcut to success when success seems impossible.”
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