Be A Good Guardian
A renowned management consultant whose theories formed the basis of modern business and leadership techniques, Peter Drucker was a proponent of the inversion method when it came to asking questions. Instead of asking, for example, “What makes a good life?” he might recommend that we start from a place of elimination by asking, “What makes a bad life?”
Marcus Aurelius offers a similar evaluative exercise when he implores us to ask ourselves whether death would be something terrible if we were deprived of a certain thing. Living well then becomes the active discarding of what does not serve us. Asking such a question requires that we be prepared for the answer, and for the discomfort that may accompany the hard decisions the answer demands.
It can be tempting to hear this as a directive to act rashly, dropping everything in pursuit of an unclear yet grand adventure. While life is short—or more accurately put, fast—its "shortness" doesn’t inherently encourage frivolity. What it encourages is intention—making decisions deliberately as one who is palpably aware of the finiteness of things.
Playwright and Stoic philosopher Seneca captures the essence of this poignantly with the following excerpt from On The Shortness Of Life:
"It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered...we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.”
And there we have our task: to be a good guardian of the lives with which we were entrusted, to be a good steward of our days, our years, our breaths—to live as though it is the greatest thing we will ever do.
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