Seneca, On Peace of Mind 10.1

Suppose, however, that your life has become full of trouble, and that without knowing what you were doing you have fallen into some snare that either public or private Fortune has set for you, and that you can neither untie it nor break it.

Then remember that fettered men suffer much at first from the burdens and clogs upon their legs: afterwards, when they have made up their minds not to fret themselves about them, but to endure them, necessity teaches them to bear them bravely, and habit to bear them easily.

When there are troubles, people will often tell you to hang in there, to wait it out, to hope for something better. “It will pass,” they say. “Everything will work out in the end.”

I hate to be the one to point this out, but that is not always the case. For many of us, the situation is not going to improve; it is just as likely to become more painful as it is to become more pleasant. Though it might offer a temporary comfort, the promise of better conditions just around the corner is still the kind of thinking that makes a life dependent on the whims of Fortune.

Sometimes, I will be dealt a hand that offers me no chance of winning that game we all like to play. I can bluff all I want and try to delay the inevitable, but I am going to walk away from the table with empty pockets. There will be no wishing it away.

We surely all know that moment, where we are so vividly aware that this is not going to end the way that we would like. It will be irrevocable. Some of us are going to lose all we possess in the world, to suffer long and hard, to be cast aside and forgotten, to be crippled in body or in spirit, to face the certainty of an inglorious death.

It will also be a moment that offers the opportunity for complete self-realization. The illusions fall away. There remains only the awareness that the circumstances are entirely beyond my control, even as my own judgments are still completely within my power. The world will act as it will, but I can also act as I will. I can think of this as a limitation, or I can think of it as a liberation.

I am reduced to what is purely myself, and if I only so choose, I can firmly hold onto this for whatever time is given me, in whatever surroundings I may find myself. There is never a need to surrender what is absolutely my own. The hardship can now become a vehicle for courage and conviction, and the act of standing firm now builds a strength of habit.

I no longer tell people that everything will get better, but rather that they have been given a chance to become better. I think this a kindness and not a cruelty, because it encourages them to uncover the beautiful dignity that is within them. It replaces a reliance upon what is done to us with a reliance on what we do with ourselves. 

Written in 10/2011