Seneca, Moral Letters 36.6

But I mean to show you later, with more care, that everything which seems to perish merely changes. 

 

Since you are destined to return, you ought to depart with a tranquil mind. Mark how the round of the Universe repeats its course; you will see that no star in our firmament is extinguished, but that they all set and rise in alternation. 

 

Summer has gone, but another year will bring it again; winter lies low, but will be restored by its own proper months; night has overwhelmed the sun, but day will soon rout the night again. The wandering stars retrace their former courses; a part of the sky is rising unceasingly, and a part is sinking. 

 

One word more, and then I shall stop; infants, and boys, and those who have gone mad, have no fear of death, and it is most shameful if reason cannot afford us that peace of mind to which they have been brought by their folly. Farewell. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 36 

 

When I get excited about a new way of thinking, I am tempted to take it to excess, to lose sight of the greater context. By focusing exclusively on the significance of one part, I end up neglecting the balance of the whole. 

 

So when a Stoic advises me to examine myself closely, and to consider my impressions carefully, I can easily twist his meaning to justify my petty anxieties about the tiniest of details. All my hand-wringing is the result of becoming obsessed with staring into a magnifying glass; I need to look up regularly and get my bearings. 

 

A circumstance weighs down on me, and I am failing to recognize it as but one more step in a necessary process of change. People far wiser than myself tell me how “This too shall pass,” but I am far too impatient to listen or step back for a moment. I must take off the blinders before I can find peace in acceptance. 

 

It will indeed pass, though that isn’t just a matter of grinning and bearing it, and it can rather become a profound appreciation for the order and design within each coming and going. Everything is charged with purpose, such that every change has its place, including my own power to modify my judgements and actions to better work with Nature, not against her. 

 

Anywhere I look, I can see the new becoming old, and then becoming new again. The motions of the heavens, the revolving of the seasons, or the cycle of life and death are all instances of a Universe telling us how what may initially seem chaotic is the work of Providence. 

 

However small a piece of that I may be, I am still a part. Can I still believe that my presence was pointless, that what remains of me, regardless of the form, will go to waste? 

 

Death may well be the end of my awareness, at least in the narrow sense I am now familiar with, but it is hardly the end of the story. My fears are misplaced. 

—Reflection written in 12/2012