Seneca, Moral Letters 17.7

I might close my letter at this point, if I had not got you into bad habits. One cannot greet Parthian royalty without bringing a gift; and in your case I cannot say farewell without paying a price.

 

But what of it? I shall borrow from Epicurus:  "The acquisition of riches has been for many men, not an end, but a change, of troubles."

 

I do not wonder. For the fault is not in the wealth, but in the mind itself. That which had made poverty a burden to us, has made riches also a burden. 

 

Just as it matters little whether you lay a sick man on a wooden or on a golden bed, for whithersoever he be moved he will carry his malady with him, so one need not care whether the diseased mind is bestowed upon riches or upon poverty. His malady goes with the man. Farewell.

 

We tend to work from the default position that having more is better, and having less is worse. Yes, but more or less of what? 

 

There will be a world of difference here if I start with a quantity of possessions, or with a quality of character. It will all reduce to a fundamental judgment about what is thought to be most beneficial or harmful, and that is a topic we pass over far too often. 

 

I regularly come across all sorts of statistics about how wealth or poverty affect our sense of contentment, and yet what is sadly missing from so many of these accounts is a way to define happiness to begin with. 

 

Am I simply to accept the word of one who ticks the “somewhat happy” box on a generic form, even as I am quite wary of the slick salesman who assures me that he is being honest? 

 

So here we have another indication of why philosophy, the accumulation of wisdom, must come before business, the accumulation of money. 

 

On its own, being rich won’t help me, just as, on its own, being poor won’t hurt me, because it isn’t the presence or absence of things that makes a life worth living. It is rather the presence or absence of sound judgment that seeks out good and avoids evil, whatever else happens to come along. 

 

Take a foolish man, ignorant of the difference between right and wrong, and he will always be anxious and dissatisfied, whether he lives in a mansion or a tent in the woods. 

 

Take a prudent man, conscious of the merit in his own actions, and he will always be able to find serenity, whether he eats a jar of caviar or a can of sardines. 

 

Shuffling around the circumstances, like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, will not alter any of it. Even if I get all of that “stuff” that I crave, I remain the same person on the inside. The bad thinking will continue to drag me down, and only the development of a more natural attitude can raise me up. 

 

Moving from Boston, the place I associated with so much pain, or getting a better job, in an attempt to lighten my load, did not cure me of anything. I continued carrying an illness of the soul around with me, and I only began to improve when I did some serious rebuilding of my values. 

 

Don’t let them tell you that philosophy is worthless, since the patterns of your awareness are the only thing that can make your life priceless. 

Written in 7/2012