Even the ones who made it wanted off

It's a weekend, or whatever counts as one for you. Step away from the job for a minute and notice the quiet pull underneath the rest you're trying to take — the sense that you'd be further along, more settled, more at peace, if you'd only climbed higher. The corner office, the bigger rig, the franchise instead of the single shop. Then you'd have arrived.

Seneca went looking at the people who actually arrived. At the very top he found the same longing pointed the other way. "The late Emperor Augustus, upon whom the gods bestowed more blessings than on any one else, never ceased to pray for rest and exemption from the troubles of empire" (Of the Shortness of Life IV, Stewart). The most powerful man alive spent his power wishing he could set it down and finally live for himself.

So the title is not the destination. The man who had everything envied the quiet life — the evening with nothing owed, the people you love, the hours that answer to no one. You may already hold the thing the powerful were praying for. Off the clock, with your kids or your garden or just a slow morning, you're standing in the leisure Augustus never reached.