7Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. 8For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9Let us not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season, if we don’t give up. 10So then, as we have opportunity, let’s do what is good toward all men, and especially toward those who are of the household of the faith.
Most of what shapes a life is small and repeated: the kindness we show, the habits we keep, the choices no one sees. This passage treats those ordinary actions like seeds, which means results rarely arrive on the day we plant. It admits that doing good can be tiring, and it answers that weariness with persistence rather than pressure. Today's small, faithful acts are worth more than they look, especially the ones aimed at the people closest to us.
Death, however, should be looked in the face by young and old alike. We are not summoned according to our rating on the censor's list. Moreover, no one is so old that it would be improper for him to hope for another day of existence. And one day, mind you, is a stage on life's journey. ... Hence, every day ought to be regulated as if it closed the series, as if it rounded out and completed our existence.
Richard M. Gummere, 1917
Seneca wrote the 124 letters to his friend Lucilius in his last years, before Nero forced him to suicide in AD 65. They were copied through the Middle Ages in manuscript collections, and Gummere's English version appeared in the Loeb Classical Library from 1917 to 1925.
Seneca doesn't ask us to dwell on death. He asks us to stop treating a day as a throwaway between more important days. Death doesn't check our age first, so postponing life until some calmer season is a gamble. If each day is a complete unit, we have a reason to finish what is owed today: the apology, the thank-you, the honest piece of work. We can also let the rest go without guilt.
PracticeTonight, before bed, ask whether you could close the day without regret. Pick one small thing, such as a call, a note of thanks or a repaired quarrel, and do it before the day ends instead of leaving it for 'someday'.
Around the year 1000, Sei Shōnagon wrote down what annoyed and delighted her. In doing so she helped found a Japanese form that is still in use.
Sei Shōnagon's book, The Pillow Book, begins with a gift of paper. Around 994, the Empress Teishi's brother brought her a stack of notebooks. Teishi asked what they should be used for, and Sei Shōnagon, one of her ladies-in-waiting, said a pillow. She was allowed to keep the paper. She filled it with whatever came to mind, and in her own telling she did not mind if the material was trivial.
The result is a heap of short pieces with no plot. Many are lists with headings such as Hateful Things, Elegant Things and Things That Make the Heart Beat Faster. Her style is quick, exact and unfair on purpose. In one entry a lover leaves at dawn. He should depart gracefully, but he grubs about in the dark for his hat and fan and fusses with the cord of his headgear. She judges him in a single sentence. She also dislikes a man who sneezes loudly. Other entries are pure pleasure, such as a particular fine sweetness served in a new metal bowl. Her taste is hard to argue with because she gives so few reasons for it.
The book's setting was fragile. Teishi's father died in 995, and her brothers were disgraced and exiled. Her rival Shōshi was installed as a second empress, and Teishi died in 1001. The Pillow Book, finished around 1002, shows almost none of this gloom. It records the wit and the snow-covered mornings of a court that was already in decline.
She claimed the book was private. According to the tale, a visitor sat on a cushion hiding her pages and carried them off, and they circulated from there. It has been copied ever since. The Pillow Book is the earliest well-known example of zuihitsu, the Japanese genre of random jottings, in which a mind's passing reactions count as literature.
RememberA bundle of free notebooks and a sharp tongue produced one of the first books built from taste alone, and it has been copied for a thousand years.
Read nextSei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book (translated by Meredith McKinney, Penguin Classics)
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Pillow Book'; Poetry Foundation, 'Sei Shōnagon'