But I must end my letter. Let me share with you the saying which pleased me today. It, too, is culled from another man's Garden: “Poverty, brought into conformity with the law of Nature, is great wealth."
Do you know what limits that law of Nature ordains for us? Merely to avert hunger, thirst, and cold.
In order to banish hunger and thirst, it is not necessary for you to pay court at the doors of the purse-proud, or to submit to the stern frown, or to the kindness that humiliates; nor is it necessary for you to scour the seas, or go campaigning; Nature's needs are easily provided and ready to hand.
It is the superfluous things for which men sweat—the superfluous things that wear our togas threadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.
That which is enough is ready to our hands. He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich. Farewell.
When people tell me that they want very much to become rich, I would like to think that they mean in spirit, though I know all too well that they almost always mean in money.
I too will hope that worldly wealth can resolve all of my worries, until I begin to see all of the discord and pain that the abuses of money will bring, leaving a man just as grasping and dissatisfied as when he had empty pockets.
The wealth itself isn’t the problem, of course, just as the poverty itself isn’t the problem, while our misguided thinking about either state of affairs is invariably the problem.
What would I most like to have in abundance? How I answer that question will reveal who I have chosen to be at the core, and I have always learned much when I listen carefully to how others answer the question.
I will often hear about people wishing to build up their reserves of money, and power, and reputation, though I will rarely hear about people wishing to build up their reserves of understanding and love.
Seneca once again turns to Epicurus, a thinker from a very different tradition who nevertheless comes to some shared truths with the Stoics. Happiness will require far less on the outside, and far more on the inside, than I at first think, such that the man who is genuinely rich thrives because he wants for very little beyond himself.
The body is ordered by Nature to be in the service of the soul, the lesser as a means for the prospering of the greater. As such, it admirably fulfills its duty by providing what is required for the mind to know the truth and the will to love the good, and anything more than that will be a preference, not a necessity.
What does the body need to offer to do its job? The basics of sustenance and shelter. This is quite sufficient for contentment, only appearing meager to those who crave luxury for its own sake, who treat pleasure as an absolute good instead of a relative good.
Such simplicity may seem like a terrible fate to the glutton, and yet observe how the greatest miseries and wasted efforts in human life will come from grabbing for more property or fame.
So much of the lying, and the stealing, and the violence are a result of a greed for nicer things, at the expense of becoming decent as people. If I look at all my exhaustion and worry, almost all of it grew from wanting far more than I really needed to be happy.
To be at peace with less is always the wiser option, since this gives us, first and foremost, a liberating mastery over ourselves.
The wicked man trades in the currency of coins, while the good man trades in the currency of character. One wishes to live a longer and more gratifying life, and so he is always afraid. The other wishes to live a better and more accepting life, and so he is always serene. Which man is truly the richer?
Written in 3/2012
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