Nothing Belongs to Us, Except Time

Practical advice for life from a 17th-century self-help book

A little green book sat on our bookshelf gathering dust for who knows how long. Neither I nor my husband has read it or remember how it made its way to our home. Today I finally picked it up to see what it’s about.

The book contains 300 aphorisms for navigating life safely and wisely. Flipping through its pages, I came across this one:

“Enjoy a little more, and strive a little less: others argue to the contrary; but happy leisure is worth more than drive, for nothing belongs to us, except time …”

Nothing belongs to us, except time.

I repeat this line several times. I feel hypnotized by these words. They took me back years ago when my meditation teacher told me,

“All that belongs to you is this moment. Nothing else belongs to you, not even your family.”

At the time what he said intrigued me, but it also triggered resistance. I thought to myself,

Why are you saying this? My family belongs to me. We belong to each other.

Today I think I understand what he meant. We belong to each other as long as time allows. Without time, without this moment, what would we be? If time is all we have while we have it, there is no reason not to spend it the best we can.

Anyway, back to this little green book, titled The Art of Worldly Wisdom.

It was written by the Spanish Jesuit scholar Baltasar Gracian and originally published in 1647. He was born in 1601, fifteen years before Shakespeare died, and just four years before Don Quixote was published.

Some lines in the book remind me of the work of Epictetus and other Stoic philosophers. Aphorism #36 reads:

… He is a fool who before forty has not turned to Hippocrates for health; what greater fool, he who by this time has not turned to Seneca for wisdom.

I agree that everyone should at least read Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life before forty. Doing so made me appreciate the value of time. Other aphorisms reflect the Stoic’s focus on developing inner peace and fortitude. However, most of them are about making one’s way in a chaotic world by playing one’s cards well and dealing safely with others.

His teachings about relating with others remain relevant: human sharks and fools are as common today as in the past. For example, Baltasar writes:

Fools are all who seem it, and the half of those who do not … but the greatest fool is he who does not know himself one, and declares all others such.

None of his aphorisms references the Bible, which is odd considering that he was a Jesuit scholar. He seemed to want his book to appeal to a wider audience, including atheists. I imagine if Baltasar were alive today, he wouldn’t shy away from writing self-help books.

I highlighted lines that resonated with me and ignored ones that don’t. The following are some of my favorites:

On Self

Don’t belong so wholly to others, that you no longer belong to yourself.

Know your chief asset, your great talent, cultivate it, and help along with the others.

Do nothing to make you lose respect for yourself, or to cheapen yourself in your own eyes.

On Life and Time

Some make much of what is of little importance, or little of what is of much importance, always judging wrong.

It is worse to be busy about the trivial than to do nothing.

Recognize things when at their best, in their season, and know how to enjoy them then.

On Work

Some judge books by their thickness, as though they had been written to exercise the arms, instead of the mind. Bigness, alone, never gets beyond the mediocre, and it is the curse of the universal man, that in trying to be everything, he is nothing.

One must journey far through time to get to the core of anything. A prudent waiting brings the season to accomplishment and ripeness to what is hidden.

Approach the easy as though it were difficult, and the difficult, as though it were easy; the first, lest overconfidence makes you careless, and the second, lest faint-heartedness make you afraid.

Some spend everything on getting started, and so never get anywhere. They plan but they don’t build.

Discovering Baltasar’s book got me excited. He offers advice for how to play the game of life well, and yet, on the other hand, he seems clearly to be channeling Stoic philosophy, which emphasized how we might best make use of our short time on earth. These ideas seem as relevant today as they were in Baltasar’s day.

Thank you for reading.