"What difference, then, is there
between me, who is a fool, and you, who are a wise man?"
"All the difference in the world:
for riches are slaves in the house of a wise man, but masters in that of a
fool. You accustom yourself to them and cling to them as if somebody had
promised that they should be yours forever, but a wise man never thinks so much
about poverty as when he is surrounded by riches.
No general ever trusts so implicitly in
the maintenance of peace as not to make himself ready for a war, which, though
it may not actually be waged, has nevertheless been declared. You are rendered
over-proud by a fine house, as though it could never be burned or fall down,
and your heads are turned by riches as though they were beyond the reach of all
dangers and were so great that Fortune has not sufficient strength to swallow
them up.
You sit idly playing with your wealth
and do not foresee the perils in store for it, as savages generally do when
besieged, for, not understanding the use of siege artillery, they look on idly
at the labors of the besiegers and do not understand the object of the machines
which they are putting together at a distance.
And this is exactly what happens to
you. You go to sleep over your property, and never reflect how many misfortunes
loom menacingly around you on all sides, and soon will plunder you of costly
spoils, but if one takes away riches from the wise man, one leaves him still in
possession of all that is his: for he lives happy in the present, and without
fear for the future. . . .
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 26 (tr Stewart)
Seneca
has explained that fortune, which expands to include our money, power, and fame,
will hardly define who we are, though our attitude toward fortune will make all
the difference. The wise man never lets himself be entrapped by his
surroundings, but depends only on the merits of his own thoughts and actions. It
is when we attach ourselves to things, when we desire to form ourselves by what
is outside of us, that we become fools.
The wise
man has long prepared himself for the loss of any of his fortune, because its
absence will make him no different than he already is. The fool thinks of
nothing else, and so cannot even imagine himself separated from his position
and his belongings.
I have
known many people who are the fools Seneca describes, and at times I have been
one of them myself. Having dedicated everything they are to their worldly
achievements, there is nothing left underneath the layers of acquisitions, no
self-reliance, no convictions, and no integrity. I have often thought of it
like people who cannot conceive of their own appearance without cosmetics or
fine clothes, and who would never leave home without such vain trappings.
The
military analogy is an appropriate one, for the fool does not even recognize
the enemy at all, and he has no idea what power is arrayed against him. He is
weak and unprepared, because he will not know how to confront his emptiness
when fortune, the foe he once assumed was always a friend, turns on him.
The
lover of fortune may tell himself that he is secure, since he will make certain
to always keep a hold of what he says he possesses. He cannot assure this, of
course, because he is already a slave to his circumstances, and he has never really
acquired anything at all, but let us, for the sake of argument, say that he manages
to be rich, powerful, and praised for his whole life. Has he not now come out
on top? As we used to say in the 1980’s, he who dies with the most toys wins.
What he
does not understand is that the damage will not be done after he loses his
fortune, but it was done long before, when he entered into her bondage. It may
only become clear to him much later that he surrendered responsibility for
himself the moment he sold his virtue for riches. Like any Faustian bargain,
the true cost was tragically overlooked.
The
outcome of the siege was decided well before it began, by whether I was
prepared or unprepared to defend the content of my character.
Written in 1/2002
Image: Frans Geffels, Relief of the Siege of Vienna, 1683
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