Seneca, Moral Letters 28.4

Can there be any spot so full of confusion as the Forum? Yet you can live quietly even there, if necessary. 

 

Of course, if one were allowed to make one's own arrangements, I should flee far from the very sight and neighborhood of the Forum. For just as pestilential places assail even the strongest constitution, so there are some places which are also unwholesome for a healthy mind which is not yet quite sound, though recovering from its ailment.

 

I disagree with those who strike out into the midst of the billows and, welcoming a stormy existence, wrestle daily in hardihood of soul with life's problems. The wise man will endure all that, but will not choose it; he will prefer to be at peace rather than at war. 

 

It helps little to have cast out your own faults if you must quarrel with those of others. Says one: "There were thirty tyrants surrounding Socrates, and yet they could not break his spirit"; but what does it matter how many masters a man has? "Slavery" has no plural; and he who has scorned it is free—no matter amid how large a mob of over-lords he stands. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 28 

 

As I try to picture what daily life in the ancient Roman Forum might have been like, I can only turn to images of hustle and bustle from my own time. I think of something like Faneuil Hall in my old hometown of Boston, or Times Square, or Piccadilly Circus. 

 

While I was once enthralled by such noisy crowds, I now find that they just give me a splitting headache. Lately, even a trip to a busy grocery store can make me feel quite anxious, so I am tempted to do my shopping first thing in the morning.  

 

Yet an enormous advantage of working on my peace of mind has been a gradually increasing ability to tolerate, and even to appreciate, disagreeable environments. It still requires a deliberate effort, but I will consciously separate external events from my internal reactions, and I then realize how the frustration is entirely in my own head. Let it be what it must be, and let me be what I must be. 

 

I think of the Park Street subway station, one of the loudest, filthiest, and most unpleasant places I know, and then I also think of a panhandler I often saw sitting there, who always had a serene glow about him. Here he was, without anything to his name, being constantly jostled and insulted by nasty yuppies, and he still found a way to be happy. 

 

Wherever my conscience does not bind me to a duty, I am not obligated to take the greater burden over the lesser. Contrary to the macho posturing of some pretenders, the Stoic does not have to seek out pain and suffering, though he will know how to bear it without complaint if the need arises. 

 

If I am constantly harping on everyone else’s weaknesses, I am not doing a very job at managing my own weaknesses. As self-mastery increases, bitterness inevitably decreases. Where I can liberate my own mindset, the bosses and the bullies no longer have any control over me. Why run away to a distant land, when this one will do just fine? 

—Reflection written in 11/2012