It's a trap!

"Suppose that you hold wealth to be a good; poverty will then distress you, and, which is most pitiable, it will be an imaginary poverty.  For you may be rich, and nevertheless, because your neighbor is richer, you suppose yourself to be poor exactly by the same amount in which you fall short of your neighbor.

"You may deem official position a good; you will be vexed at another's appointment or re-appointment to the consulship; you will be jealous whenever you see a name several times in the state records.  Your ambition will be so frenzied that you will regard yourself last in the race if there is anyone in front of you.

"Or you may rate death as the worst of evils, although there is really no evil therein except that which precedes death's coming fear. You will be frightened out of your wits, not only by real, but by fancied dangers, and will be tossed for ever on the sea of illusion."

--Seneca the Younger, Moral Letters to Lucilius 104  (tr Gummere)

 Though the world tempts me to think that happiness or misery come from the things outside of me, Stoicism reminds me that they are only from within me. What is so tragic is that once I make an attempt to conquer the the things of the world, to acquire, control, and possess, I have by my own thinking made myself a slave to those things of the world.

The trap is that fortune dangles bright and shiny objects in front of us, and tempts us to reach out and grab what is enticing. Even if I get hold of a trinket, there is always another, and I soon find myself concerned about the trinkets held by others.

If I seek pleasure, I grow tired of the ones I now have, and crave new ones. If I seek wealth and possessions, I am constantly comparing my wealth with that of others. If I want status and position, I will always be envious of precisely that one title I do not possess. The pull of want will never end, and instead of being the consumer, I myself am consumed.

Just as want of things can enslave me, so too can the fear of things. I just recently came across what Seneca describes, a man who so dreads death and disease that he makes himself miserable trying to find any way to avoid them.

Whether it be desire or aversion, as soon as I define my existence through such passions I have traded Nature for illusion.


 Written on 1/19/2000

Image: Pieter Bruegel, Avarice (1558)