Seneca, Moral Letters 13.8

Let us, then, look carefully into the matter. It is likely that some troubles will befall us; but it is not a present fact. How often has the unexpected happened! How often has the expected never come to pass! 

 

And even though it is ordained to be, what does it avail to run out to meet your suffering? You will suffer soon enough, when it arrives; so look forward meanwhile to better things.

 

What shall you gain by doing this? Time. There will be many happenings meanwhile which will serve to postpone, or end, or pass on to another person, the trials which are near or even in your very presence. 

 

A fire has opened the way to flight. Men have been let down softly by a catastrophe. Sometimes the sword has been checked even at the victim's throat. Men have survived their own executioners. Even bad fortune is fickle. Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime it is not. So look forward to better things.

 

The fact remains that I don’t know what will occur, or how it will come to pass, or whether I will find myself in riches or in rags, loved or despised, given pleasure or pain. 

 

The Stoic understands that this has nothing to do with “luck”, because something cannot come from nothing. Rather, it is about the limits of my own awareness, which serve as a healthy reminder to mind my own business, attending to the improvement of myself. Providence will unfold as it should, and I also have a part to play. 

 

And even if great hardships were to lie ahead, agonizing over the future would not offer the tiniest bit of relief; quite the contrary, it would only magnify and extend the suffering. 

 

I think of all those sayings and passages I scoffed at when I was younger, that now make me pause in reverence. An oldie but goodie: 

 

Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

 

To find joy in the time that I have is not merely about putting off some inevitable doom for as long as possible, but rather about appreciating each and every moment that is granted, for its own sake, and learning that the present does not have to be ruined by either the past or the future. 

 

I know this all too well from my own blunders, where mistakes from long ago made me assume that I then had nothing worthwhile to hope for, when all I needed to do was embrace the now, and to cast aside the weight of what literally did not exist. 

 

It turns out that only the negativity of my attitude brings out the worst. To be quite honest, for all the things that I bemoan, I was met with beautiful opportunities far more often than I was ever beaten down. Sometimes, in a blessed irony, the beating down itself was transformed into a beautiful opportunity. 

 

Situations can change in an instant, or they can also gradually evolve into something surprising. Most importantly, I can always turn my thinking around, and realize that what I expect, whether good or bad, will very regularly be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

I am the one who decides that, not anyone else. There is no need to worry if I do what is right now. 

Written in 6/2012