Seneca, Moral Letters 22.5

From business, however, my dear Lucilius, it is easy to escape, if only you will despise the rewards of business. We are held back and kept from escaping by thoughts like these: "What then? Shall I leave behind me these great prospects? Shall I depart at the very time of harvest? Shall I have no slaves at my side? No retinue for my litter? No crowd in my reception room?"

 

Hence men leave such advantages as these with reluctance; they love the reward of their hardships, but curse the hardships themselves. Men complain about their ambitions as they complain about their mistresses; in other words, if you penetrate their real feelings, you will find, not hatred, but bickering.

 

Search the minds of those who cry down what they have desired, who talk about escaping from things which they are unable to do without; you will comprehend that they are lingering of their own free will in a situation which they declare they find it hard and wretched to endure. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 22

 

When I say that I wish to free myself from a burden, and yet, as much as I object, I continue to carry it around with me wherever I go, it can only mean one thing: my thinking remains attached to some illusory benefit, and my awareness about any true good is painfully divided. 

 

As Sheryl Crow sang back in the 1990’s:

 

If it makes you happy

It can't be that bad. 

If it makes you happy

Then why the hell are you so sad?

 

Old habits die hard, but attending to the truth of my judgments is the key to release. I believe I can somehow win by resenting the world, when the concern must instead be turned inward, to honing my estimation of good and bad. In all those lines of code, where have I made a fatal error? 

 

A day at the office, most any office, is incomplete without the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Even with the biggest paychecks, or the enviable perks, or the spacious offices, there is the constant grumbling of complaints and the heavy atmosphere of discontent. 

 

Why not, then, find a better way to live? Who has told us that this is how it must be done? The so-called experts? Observe how they have their lofty status, and yet they run around like chickens with their heads cut off, just like the rest of us. 

 

If we so despise the work of acquiring the things we desire, perhaps we are desiring the wrong things. 

 

“But I need to do this, otherwise I won’t get . . .” I can fill in the blank according to my latest worldly obsession, whatever external convenience or luxury I have convinced myself is necessary for my happiness, and so I have unwittingly isolated the obstacle. There is no need for “getting” anything beyond what Nature has already provided, and I should rather commit myself to building the character expressed in my own doing. 

 

I will only be glad to dispose of it when I know it to be empty of meaning; my hesitation passes when I have discovered a far deeper joy within my soul. 

 

I have never had a mistress, though I have known many who busied themselves with playing the field or getting some on the side, and I shouldn’t have been surprised to see how their anxiety and misery just seemed to get worse and worse. It’s the same with any kind of lust, whether it be for pleasure, or for riches, or for fame. I think of the people who smoke cigars to look cool, but are clearly not enjoying it one bit. 

 

Yes, lingering is the perfect word for it, hanging about all the old haunts with a nostalgia for the way I insist it once was, while my better part knows full well that it was never all it was cracked up to be. It is time to correct the judgment, and thus to improve the outcome. 

—Reflection written in 9/2012