You may desire to know how I, who preach to you so freely, am practicing. I confess frankly: my expense account balances, as you would expect from one who is free-handed but careful. I cannot boast that I waste nothing, but I can at least tell you what I am wasting, and the cause and manner of the loss; I can give you the reasons why I am a poor man.
My situation, however, is the same as that of many who are reduced to slender means through no fault of their own: everyone forgives them, but no one comes to their rescue.
Seneca wrote these letters to Lucilius toward the end of his life, in a sort of retirement from the political challenges he had faced for so many years in Rome. I can only imagine that a transition of such a kind, from being at the center of the action to being put out to pasture, gave him all the more occasions to consider where the true value of life lay, and what actually distinguished being rich from being poor.
I am admittedly prone to overthinking a text, yet I can’t help but read this passage on two different levels.
On the one hand, Seneca is here simply describing the state of his finances, and the task of making ends meet in this new stage of his life. Being from a noble family, Seneca would hardly have been in any abject need, but his exclusion from the halls of power would surely have diminished his resources.
On the other hand, he can also be seen as speaking about a deeper sense of worth, about how much of his life he has left to spend, and how he is choosing to spend it. He no longer has as much time as he once did, and he is more acutely aware of the ways he can go about being wasteful.
The decisive point comes when all the circumstances of my life, weaving their way in and out in a manner quite beyond my control, take away all the accessories I have come to rely upon, leaving me with only myself.
I find that I may have very little, and yet there is still so much I can do with the little that remains. It requires only changing the measure of my success, thereby becoming poor in the flesh but rich in spirit.
No, there isn’t much money, and there isn’t much time either, but every single moment, however humble, provides the possibility for thinking and acting with wisdom and virtue. A mere second, in the most painful or frustrating of conditions, would provide the chance for a boundless fulfillment.
When I lose things, very many people will offer their regrets, though very few people will attempt to do anything about it. I suppose there isn’t much they could do, even if they wanted to, since no one else can give another man a good life. Whatever is or is not available to me, I am the one who decides how I will spend it.
Written in 5/2000
IMAGE: Mateo Inurria, Seneca (1895)
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