Seneca, Moral Letters 19.4

Would that you had had the privilege of growing old amid the limited circumstances of your origin, and that fortune had not raised you to such heights! 

 

You were removed far from the sight of wholesome living by your swift rise to prosperity, by your province, by your position as procurator, and by all that such things promise; you will next acquire more important duties and after them still more. 

 

And what will be the result? Why wait until there is nothing left for you to crave? That time will never come. We hold that there is a succession of causes, from which fate is woven; similarly, you may be sure, there is a succession in our desires; for one begins where its predecessor ends. 

 

You have been thrust into an existence which will never of itself put an end to your wretchedness and your slavery. Withdraw your chafed neck from the yoke; it is better that it should be cut off once for all, than galled forever.

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 19

Given how deeply confused we can be about the source of our happiness, is it any surprise how turned around we also get when it comes to a measure of success or failure in life? The popular standard is that the better man is the one with more “stuff”, and so we further assume that it is absolutely best to have as much of this “stuff” as soon and as often as possible. 

 

Consequently, we may think it most helpful to surround our children from birth with plenty of worldly privilege and prestige, to give them an “advantage” of wealth and influence in climbing that ladder of achievement. 

 

Is it possible that we are doing them far greater harm than good in all this, not merely by praising riches over poverty, but rather by even encouraging them to depend on situations that have nothing to do with who they really are? What use will there be in telling them to work hard, when the effort is directed toward the wrong goal? 

 

It might seem odd for Seneca to tell Lucilius that he would be better off back in the obscurity of his childhood than in the prosperity of his adulthood, but that will only be so if we are working from the false claim that contentment is in the circumstances.

 

Seneca isn’t just proposing the contraries to the usual premises, that rich is good and that poor is bad, and he is instead challenging us to discover a different model of human worth altogether. The presence or absence of external things is not a requirement for being happy; our internal choices about how we relate to the presence or absence of such things is the key to being happy. 

 

The problem starts when we love fortune for its own sake, forgetting that events are not in themselves beneficial or harmful to the soul. Perhaps the change in estimation is slow and unassuming, yet the result is still a relationship where mastery has given way to slavery. I have never been as socially prominent as Seneca or Lucilius, though that creeping addiction sounds awfully familiar. 

 

Has being given more tempted me to neglect the dignity of my thoughts and deeds? If it beyond my power to alter what is around me, it is always within my power to alter my point of view, such that I can act as if I am poor in body, so that I may become rich in spirit. 

 

When I make demands for very little, never currying favor or expecting any further profit, I am also able to appreciate how everything I already am is more than enough to be whole. A greed for ever-growing possessions cannot be satisfied, while my own acts of understanding and of love cannot be exhausted. 

 

A cycle of dependence gives way to a pattern of self-reliance once I train myself to look away from petty diversions. I need to go all the way back to the beginning, reconsidering my first principles of right and wrong, if I ultimately wish to be freed from the yoke. 

—Reflection written in 8/2012