The Smiths, Seneca, and the Corrosion of the Soul

"It pays my way and it corrodes my soul."
— The Smiths, Frankly, Mr. Shankly

A few days ago, someone posted a photograph from Corgo with the caption:

"Vim só de visita ao Corgo porque o tempo cronológico não dá para mais."

I just came by Corgo, because chronological time allows for no more.

On the surface, there is nothing unusual about such a sentence. It is the kind of thing many of us say: life is busy, there are obligations, conferences, projects, juries, cultural events, meetings. The calendar fills itself. The days disappear.

And yet, reading those words, I found myself thinking of Seneca.

The person who wrote them does not need to keep running. She and her husband are retired. They own a beautiful cultural and artistic retreat by the Atlantic, north of Porto, in what was once a quiet fishing village. They have, by all appearances, arrived at the stage of life toward which so many people spend decades working.

And still, there is no time.

There is always one more conference to attend, one more panel to moderate, one more event to organise, one more obligation demanding attention.

Seneca knew these people well.

Writing to his friend Lucilius almost two thousand years ago, he observed:

"For the love of bustle is not industry, it is only the restlessness of a haunted mind."

The Romans had no smartphones, no social media, no email, but they had exactly the same temptation: to fill every empty space with activity, to mistake movement for purpose, to believe that a packed calendar is proof of a meaningful life.

We flatter ourselves that we are indispensable. We tell ourselves that our affairs compel us.

Seneca disagreed.

"No man is at the mercy of his affairs."

He believed that most of our busyness is not imposed from outside but chosen from within. We choose entanglement because stillness forces us to encounter ourselves. We keep spinning plates because we fear what might happen if they stop spinning.

I have seen this impulse in many forms.

I think of Bernard's words:

"I'm very much my mother's son who never sat down."

"All I want is more plates to spin."

"If by 8 a.m. I haven't done anything, I feel like I wasted the day."

There is something admirable in that drive. Much beauty has been created by restless souls. But there is also a cost.

I think of my former husband, too. The endless succession of projects. The certainty that the next undertaking would finally bring peace, fulfilment, completion. The burnouts. The depressions for both of us. His crises, including the one that broke the camel's back. The inability to remain still long enough to inhabit the life that had already been built.

Men are often praised for never stopping, for being providers, builders, problem-solvers, indispensable people who keep plates spinning. The danger is that a man can become so identified with usefulness, with busyness, that he forgets how to rest, create, grieve, love, tend to his soul, or simply exist outside his function.

Recently, I began reading Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans by Kenneth Womack, about Mal Evans, the Beatles' road manager. The archetypal man who lived in perpetual motion, forever in service to the machinery of creativity and success. The modern world celebrates such people. It applauds productivity, ambition and momentum.

As a young woman, I was an agent, manager and road manager. I know a bit about that type of life. When we're young, it's all fine and dandy. I liked the road; I still do. It did pay my way. Did it corrode my soul? Not my soul.

Looking back, and since he was doing the same job on top of our other projects, it consumed our time as a couple. I do not remember weekends or entire weeks that belonged just to the two of us. There was always one more concert, whether by the bands we worked with or by some other band we wanted to see.

Yet Seneca would have asked a simple question: too expensive for whom?

Because this is the insight buried inside Morrissey's lyric:

"It pays my way and it corrodes my soul."

What appears to sustain us externally may, in fact, be bankrupting us internally.

Seneca repeatedly returns to the same theme throughout the Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), one of my favourite books. Human beings protect their money, their property and their reputations with extraordinary vigilance, yet they surrender their time, their attention, their soul and their inner peace with astonishing carelessness.

We defend our possessions while allowing our souls to be slowly eaten away.

Corrosion is the perfect word. Corrosion is not an explosion. It is not a sudden blast. It is slow. Chemical. Incremental. A thing dissolves from within while preserving its outward shape.

The career remains. The conferences continue. The emails are answered. The mortgage is paid. Yet something essential quietly disappears.

The Stoics understood this. The Taoists understood it. Buddhism understood it.

All three traditions arrive, through different roads, at the same destination: the external world can offer comfort, status and distraction, but it cannot compensate for the destruction of one's inner life.

This week, another image has remained with me.

A friend told me that a beloved friend of his had recently died. She was surrounded by people who loved her and whom she loved. Janis Joplin was playing. Her body was covered in rose petals and rosebuds from her neck to her feet.

He also told me that he has been navigating waves of grief and relief, sadness and gratitude, but that, fortunately, he has many things keeping him busy. I understood what he meant.

And yet Seneca whispers his ancient warning across the centuries.

Busyness can sustain us. Busyness can save us. Busyness can distract us. But busyness can also prevent us from living.

The opening words of Moral Letters to Lucilius remain as urgent today as they were in Nero's Rome:

"Vindica te tibi." Claim yourself for yourself.

Protect your mind. Guard your time.

And ask, from time to time, whether the things that pay your way are quietly corroding your soul.

[painting: image: 15th-century illuminated manuscript, Laurentian Library - Seneca the Younger, Letters (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium). Latin manuscript. In ms. Florence]

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