The Search for the Superfluous

A sentence from Seneca suggests a subject: It would be well if we could make “it clear to all men,” he said, “that the search for the superfluous means a great outlay of time, and that many have gone through life [not really living, but] merely accumulating the instruments of life.” “…Life is so short,” he continued, ” and we make it still shorter by our unsteadiness…We break up life into little bits, and fritter it away.”
Sometimes suddenly, if we haven’t done so sooner, we come to realize that just going to be going, just talking to be talking, just spending to be spending, just rushing to be rushing, doesn’t really mean much. And periodically we need to appraise our past performance, to repent and improve, and to resolve to follow through to solid conclusions the good things we undertake to do, and cease, as Seneca suggested, “the search for the superfluous.”
In one of his incisive essays, Joseph Addison turned his talent to this same subject: “I could wish,” he wrote, “that men while they are in health, would consider well the nature of the part they are engaged in, and… whether it was worth coming into the world for, whether it be suitable to a reasonable being; …in this life, or will turn to an advantage in the next.”
Then Addison cited some excerpts taken separately from the diaries of a gentleman and a lady of some supposed consequence—entries of activities almost too trivial to mention, and then observed:
“I question not, but the reader will be surprised to find the above-mentioned…taking so much care of a life that was filled with such inconsiderable actions, and…so very small improvements; …I would…recommend to every one of my readers, the keeping of a journal of their lives for one week, and setting down punctually their whole series of employments, during that space of time. This kind of self-examination would give them a true state of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about…and…weigh all those indifferent actions, which though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for.”
As we appraise our part in the events of the past, may we more fully resolve to use what follows for learning, for labor, for repentance and improvement, free from too much of trivia, too much of meaningless motions, too much, as Seneca said, of the search for the superfluous—and to balance things material with those of mind and spirit and the everlasting things of life.