Letter 43: On the relativity of fame
Do you ask how the news reached me, and who informed me, that you were entertaining this idea, of which you had said nothing to a single soul? It was that most knowing of persons—gossip.
"What," you say, "am I such a great personage that I can stir up gossip?"
Now there is no reason why you should measure yourself according to this part of the world; have regard only to the place where you are dwelling.
Any point which rises above adjacent points is great, at the spot where it rises. For greatness is not absolute; comparison increases it or lessens it.
A ship which looms large in the river seems tiny when on the ocean. A rudder which is large for one vessel, is small for another.
Do you ask how the news reached me, and who informed me, that you were entertaining this idea, of which you had said nothing to a single soul? It was that most knowing of persons—gossip.
"What," you say, "am I such a great personage that I can stir up gossip?"
Now there is no reason why you should measure yourself according to this part of the world; have regard only to the place where you are dwelling.
Any point which rises above adjacent points is great, at the spot where it rises. For greatness is not absolute; comparison increases it or lessens it.
A ship which looms large in the river seems tiny when on the ocean. A rudder which is large for one vessel, is small for another.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 43
The corruption creeps in when I confuse my inner character with my outer conditions. It grows when I direct my efforts to presenting an appearance over acting with integrity. Before too long, I am obsessed with increasing my own status by diminishing the status of others. My life has now become an elaborate show, defined by image, driven by rumors, drawn to defamation.
Gossip is certainly a base vice, and yet it is hardly limited to the uncultured. Those of comfortable means and sophisticated tastes are simply more subtle and refined at employing scandal to promote themselves, such that the company found in boardrooms and churches, not in barrooms and brothels, has most tempted me to fall into a life of nastiness.
A part of the trap is in believing that other people are as important as they claim to be, and in assuming that the kind words they speak to your face will not be replaced by muckraking as soon as your back is turned.
Don’t be flattered that the fashionable folks are talking about you; be worried that their exclusivity is not to their credit.
In the end it doesn’t matter one bit whether those back in Rome are discussing Lucilius, because the only calling that counts is to become a good man, regardless of where he may find himself.
Perhaps Lucilius feels that Sicily is too far away from the center of attention? He may be forgetting that old Stoic lesson about what is rightly within his power, and what is blissfully meant to remain outside of his power. The Stoic Turn demands reversing the priorities of attention.
What I perceive as being big may not be so big at all, once I place it into a broader context. If I compare working as a mid-level bureaucrat in a backwater office with getting elected to Congress in Washington, I might feel envious, but then the Congressman feels insignificant in contrast to a member of the Cabinet, and so we are left with a cycle of unending vanities.
For all of that, where is the concern for growing in understanding and love? Isn’t that the greatest task before us? Where the measure is on a properly human scale, nothing is as grand as the formation of the virtues, nothing is as petty as the bickering over the trinkets.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
In language my daughter appreciates, just learn to be a fine fish, without getting distracted by the size of the pond, or whether any of the other fish happen to be watching.
The corruption creeps in when I confuse my inner character with my outer conditions. It grows when I direct my efforts to presenting an appearance over acting with integrity. Before too long, I am obsessed with increasing my own status by diminishing the status of others. My life has now become an elaborate show, defined by image, driven by rumors, drawn to defamation.
Gossip is certainly a base vice, and yet it is hardly limited to the uncultured. Those of comfortable means and sophisticated tastes are simply more subtle and refined at employing scandal to promote themselves, such that the company found in boardrooms and churches, not in barrooms and brothels, has most tempted me to fall into a life of nastiness.
A part of the trap is in believing that other people are as important as they claim to be, and in assuming that the kind words they speak to your face will not be replaced by muckraking as soon as your back is turned.
Don’t be flattered that the fashionable folks are talking about you; be worried that their exclusivity is not to their credit.
In the end it doesn’t matter one bit whether those back in Rome are discussing Lucilius, because the only calling that counts is to become a good man, regardless of where he may find himself.
Perhaps Lucilius feels that Sicily is too far away from the center of attention? He may be forgetting that old Stoic lesson about what is rightly within his power, and what is blissfully meant to remain outside of his power. The Stoic Turn demands reversing the priorities of attention.
What I perceive as being big may not be so big at all, once I place it into a broader context. If I compare working as a mid-level bureaucrat in a backwater office with getting elected to Congress in Washington, I might feel envious, but then the Congressman feels insignificant in contrast to a member of the Cabinet, and so we are left with a cycle of unending vanities.
For all of that, where is the concern for growing in understanding and love? Isn’t that the greatest task before us? Where the measure is on a properly human scale, nothing is as grand as the formation of the virtues, nothing is as petty as the bickering over the trinkets.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
In language my daughter appreciates, just learn to be a fine fish, without getting distracted by the size of the pond, or whether any of the other fish happen to be watching.
—Reflection written in 2/2013
IMAGE: Charles Conder, Gossip (c. 1904)
No comments:
Post a Comment