[The following is my adaptation/interpretation of Seneca’s 23rd letter to Lucilius]
Dear friend,
I’m sure you expect that I’m writing to you about something trivial, like the weather or some other topic people write about when they have nothing that matters to say. No. I’ll tell you something that may help you as well as me. What is this “something” you ask? How about the question of “What makes the foundation of a sound mind?” The answer: Not to find joy in things that don’t matter. And that’s not even really the foundation – it’s more like the pinnacle!
We have reached the highest level when we know the meaning of true joy and we haven’t relied on things outside of ourselves to give us happiness. The man motivated by the hope of anything – even if he can easily obtain it and he has been successful in getting it so far – is always troubled and unsure of himself.
Above all, my friend, make it your mission to learn how to experience joy. When I tell you to avoid empty hope, do you think I’m trying to take away the pleasures you find as a matter of luck or chance, even though it seems like these things makes you happy? I’m actually trying to do the opposite – I don’t want you to avoid happiness. In fact, I want happiness to come from within you instead. Things outside of us do not make us truly content; they only sooth us temporarily. Just because someone laughs, doesn’t mean he has experienced true joy. Your soul needs to be happy and self-confident, no matter what the circumstances may happen to be.
Real joy is a serious matter. Is it possible to not worry about death, to embrace poverty, to curb simple pleasures, or to endure pain? The person who is able to do these things experiences true joy. This joy may not necessarily be cheerfulness, but this joy is that which comes from tranquility. This true joy is something that you can permanently own and never goes away, once you really attain it.
Think of it like a mine, where a poor mine only has some minerals on the surface that are quickly used up. A rich mine is one where the minerals are deep and abundant, and one can keep going back to it over and over and never exhaust its riches. It’s just like those cheap trinkets that delight the ignorant masses only briefly and in a superficial way – they lack any real substance. But the true joy I’m trying to tell you about is not superficial, but something solid which only keeps revealing its high quality the more you experience it.
I wish for you, my friend, to do this one thing that can make you really happy: Get rid of all those superficial things that may look good on the outside and really anyone can obtain. Instead, look to the true goodness that comes from inside yourself. From “inside yourself,” I mean from the very best part of you.
The body is fragile and temporary. It may be necessary, but only as a means to an end. The body gives us only simple and short-lived pleasures which we are quick to regret (except maybe in those times where we can control our desires through extreme self-control and gain something valuable by overcoming these desires). In other words, pleasure, unless kept within reasonable limits, always results in distress. But it’s hard to keep this pleasurable good within limits so that it is indeed valuable to us. Unlike the good that comes from pleasure, there’s no downside to desiring real good.
So what is this real good and where does it come from? I will tell you: It comes from a good conscience, from honorable purposes, and right actions. It comes from being above the fortunes that may come from luck or chance. It comes from an even and calm way of living. Most people jump randomly from one thing to another. Or actually, they don’t even jump – they are pushed and pulled. Such wavering and unstable people cannot find a real good that is stable and everlasting.
Only few people control themselves and their actions by a guiding purpose. The rest do not guide themselves, but are swept along like objects in a river. And just like objects in a river, some are held back by the waters and float along gently, others are thrown around by a violent current, some near to the river’s bank are left alongside it abandoned, and others are carried out to sea. Instead of this randomness of chance, we should decide things and then stick with those decisions.
As Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, once said “It is tough to always be beginning life.” This is what people without a committed life philosophy are always doing – trying to begin the life they wish they would lead. For these people, life is always incomplete.
A person cannot be prepared to face death if he has just begun to live. Instead, one should aim to have already lived a complete life at every moment. It’s not uncommon for people to live as if only beginning life in this way. Some only begin to live when they are approaching the end of life. Some have ended life before even beginning to live. Don’t let that be you.
Farewell.
Demand a Horizon 