Seneca, Moral Letters 18.7

So begin, my dear Lucilius, to follow the custom of these men, and set apart certain days on which you shall withdraw from your business and make yourself at home with the scantiest fare. Establish business relations with poverty.

 

“Dare, O my friend, to scorn the sight of wealth,

And mould thyself to kinship with thy God.” 

 

For he alone is in kinship with God who has scorned wealth. 

 

Of course I do not forbid you to possess it, but I would have you reach the point at which you possess it dauntlessly; this can be accomplished only by persuading yourself that you can live happily without it as well as with it, and by regarding riches always as likely to elude you.

 

I would rightly be a laughingstock if I said that I wanted to get my body in shape, while refusing any regimen of exercise. I would also be considered a fool for striving to improve my intellect, but never taking the time to study. 

 

And yet why do I somehow still stumble about, acting as if a man can become good without rigorously training his character? Is it just that I think a moral worth is lowest on that totem pole of life? 

 

While many of my esteemed peers spent three years to become lawyers, and I wasted five years to apparently become a philosopher, how many years did I commit to becoming more thoughtful and loving? What a shame it is when I treat my human calling with far less attention than my career. 

 

A part of the beauty in Stoicism is that it is never too late to start, since it is the dignity of living well right now that matters the most. The past is gone, and the future is uncertain, but the present can be seized with total commitment. If I wish to become wise, brave, temperate, and just, today happens to be the perfect day to get the ball rolling.

 

For all that time spent on accumulating riches and fame, today can be the day when I begin to practice putting my soul in order. Where the business was once about grabbing more, the business can now be about finding joy in less. A reliance on what is on the outside gives way to a nurturing of what is on the inside. 

 

Money, finery, and luxury are not in themselves a problem, but loving them for their own sake is most certainly a problem. I am only worthy to possess them if I am also happy to live without them, and there will be an increase in my struggle for constancy where there is a decrease in my longing for affluence. 

 

Let me reconsider what I think it means to be rich. Let me strengthen my virtues by befriending poverty. 

Written in 8/2012