Seneca, Moral Letters 16.6

Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false has no limits. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless. 

 

Recall your steps, therefore, from idle things, and when you would know whether that which you seek is based upon a natural or upon a misleading desire, consider whether it can stop at any definite point. 

 

If you find, after having travelled far, that there is a more distant goal always in view, you may be sure that this condition is contrary to Nature. Farewell.

 

In a society where boosterism is considered a virtue, and where we are told that we can be anything we want to be or get anything we want to get, a limit is usually perceived as a bad thing, a restriction that keeps us down. 

 

And yet a limit can also be a very good thing, in the sense that it defines what something is as opposed to what it isn’t, and it distinguishes where I should be going from where I shouldn’t. To delineate, after all, is to clarify precisely, so we might avoid the dangers of sloppy thinking and empty promises.

 

A mere opinion, as an assertion divorced from proof, can at first seem quite liberating, and yet it provides me with absolutely nothing. There is only appearance without reality and preference without principle, such that all the impressions in the world are devoid of any substance. 

 

I might imagine, for example, the most sumptuous feast, but there can be no eating it, and my stomach will still be growling. I can speak the most moving words, but they will float away without a reason to trust in them. 

 

It should hardly be surprising, therefore, that when I become enamored of this or that opinion, I set myself in motion, even as I am going nowhere. I run around from here to there, though I have no destination. My desires will be never-ending, because when one fleeting urge leaves me disappointed, I will promptly chase after another. 

 

Following Nature, however, gives me clear bounds, and offers an order of beginnings, middles, and endings. By reflecting on who I am, I come to understand more of what I truly need, and then my wants are tempered by meaning and purpose. Why keep asking for more and more when I already have what is essential? There is no need to keep eating when the belly is already full. 

 

What a wonderful irony, that when it comes to the moral law, he who wants much ends up with very little, while he who wants little ends up with very much. 

Written in 7/2012