Seneca, On Peace of Mind 13.1

It was, I imagine, following out this principle that Democritus taught that "he who would live at peace must not do much business either public or private," referring of course to unnecessary business: for if there be any necessity for it we ought to transact not only much but endless business, both public and private.

In cases, however, where no solemn duty invites us to act, we had better keep ourselves quiet: for he who does many things often puts himself in Fortune's power, and it is safest not to tempt her often, but always to remember her existence, and never to promise oneself anything on her security.

I find it quite helpful to regularly run a bit of a personal inventory, where I try to work out the difference between what I truly need to do and what I only believe I need to do. If I am brutally honest with myself, I find that I get involved in all sorts of endeavors, and yet almost all of them are not required for my happiness.

In fact, all of that busywork is more of a diversion, and it easily keeps me from attending to what matters the most. I neglect the essential, which actually demands very little of me, at the expense of the trivial, which spreads my efforts too thin.

What is good in life is itself not that difficult, because it is simple, but what is difficult in life is worrying about all the wrong things, because we make them so complex for ourselves.

I may need years and years of higher education and professional experience to learn how to write an impressive report or sell the latest project to the investors, and yet it only takes a bit of thoughtfulness and a touch of kindness to do right by my neighbor. The thoughtfulness and the kindness only come hard, in my experience, due to my own poorly built habits.

It isn’t just that the life of the busybody is hectic, and grasping, and grueling; it is indeed all of that, which is especially frustrating when we finally learn how meager the rewards will be. No, what is most harmful is how it becomes a surrender of our own lives, a dependence upon getting all of those circumstances lined up just right. In the process, the world we are so eager to master takes a mastery over us.

I struggle to gain a control over the unfolding of events and the judgments of other people, and I may deceive myself into thinking that I have gained it. All that has happened, however, is that the way other things work on their own terms has managed, for the moment, to be in agreement with how I would wish them to be. I am really just following them around.

Once they go off in a different direction from what I had planned, I wonder what didn’t “work out”, or where my cleverness and power were most lacking, and it simply doesn’t occur to me that I was betting on matters that were far beyond my power to begin with.

Why enslave myself to Fortune? Keep it simple, keep it reliable.

Written in 12/2011