There is supposed to be something significant about us reaching the end of a year – that point in time where we come to an ending and then re-start, where January 1 marks the beginning of a new journey that will take us all the way through to the end of December again.
If you are going to try to improve in the next year or you do have some regrets about the previous year, don’t just hope that this will happen. That’s not how it works. As Seneca wrote to a friend who’d asked for advice, you need to pick a person or a model to hold yourself against.
"Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model. There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won’t make the crooked straight."
I've been lucky to have had such a friend as a role model for almost thirty years. He has been dead now for almost as long as we had been friends but he's still my role model as well as having become my memento mori.
I doubt if my late friend read Seneca but he knew how to live him. And so will you if you spare the time to read "On the Shortness of Life - Life is long if you know how to use it". You've just 85 hours left to the new year.
