Letter 50: On our blindness and its cure
I received your letter many months after you had posted it; accordingly, I thought it useless to ask the carrier what you were busied with. He must have a particularly good memory if he can remember that!
But I hope by this time you are living in such a way that I can be sure what it is you are busied with, no matter where you may be. For what else are you busied with except improving yourself every day, laying aside some error, and coming to understand that the faults which you attribute to circumstances are in yourself?
We are indeed apt to ascribe certain faults to the place or to the time; but those faults will follow us, no matter how we change our place.
I received your letter many months after you had posted it; accordingly, I thought it useless to ask the carrier what you were busied with. He must have a particularly good memory if he can remember that!
But I hope by this time you are living in such a way that I can be sure what it is you are busied with, no matter where you may be. For what else are you busied with except improving yourself every day, laying aside some error, and coming to understand that the faults which you attribute to circumstances are in yourself?
We are indeed apt to ascribe certain faults to the place or to the time; but those faults will follow us, no matter how we change our place.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 50
We say we are busy in our careers, and we largely limit the term “business” to mean that by which we earn a profit. We say that our time should be spent productively, by which we mean the most efficient way to accumulate wealth. When we are asked “what we do”, we are trained to respond by offering our trade.
It’s a shame to reduce people to trifling labels. What does it tell us about our priorities when we define ourselves by such servile standards? “Making a living” should be about human formation, not about moving around little pieces of paper.
Though I know that some people do so merely to be facetious, I enjoy it when a man lists his profession as something like “a seeker of the truth” or “an imbiber of beauty” or “a wanderer on the back roads”. He is at least aware that he is made for far more than punching the clock.
We have one job, which is a full-time job, and that is to become a little better as human beings daily, and that is achieved by the increase of the virtues. That is the only currency that counts in this life. Any other chores we undertake must be in service to that noble vocation.
Instead of taking credit for fiddling about with the circumstances of life, taking full responsibility for oneself means rising above those circumstances. As long as I am blaming the way of the world for my ills, or accusing others of bringing me down, I still have far to go in my quest for self-improvement.
I won’t become any better, and thereby any happier, by getting a fancier job, or showing off an adorable family, or buying that nice house in the suburbs. Whatever I claim to own, it will be as nothing if I don’t first genuinely own myself.
If I don’t expunge my vices, they will continue to assail me, wherever I happen to go, and with whomever I happen to rub shoulders.
We say we are busy in our careers, and we largely limit the term “business” to mean that by which we earn a profit. We say that our time should be spent productively, by which we mean the most efficient way to accumulate wealth. When we are asked “what we do”, we are trained to respond by offering our trade.
It’s a shame to reduce people to trifling labels. What does it tell us about our priorities when we define ourselves by such servile standards? “Making a living” should be about human formation, not about moving around little pieces of paper.
Though I know that some people do so merely to be facetious, I enjoy it when a man lists his profession as something like “a seeker of the truth” or “an imbiber of beauty” or “a wanderer on the back roads”. He is at least aware that he is made for far more than punching the clock.
We have one job, which is a full-time job, and that is to become a little better as human beings daily, and that is achieved by the increase of the virtues. That is the only currency that counts in this life. Any other chores we undertake must be in service to that noble vocation.
Instead of taking credit for fiddling about with the circumstances of life, taking full responsibility for oneself means rising above those circumstances. As long as I am blaming the way of the world for my ills, or accusing others of bringing me down, I still have far to go in my quest for self-improvement.
I won’t become any better, and thereby any happier, by getting a fancier job, or showing off an adorable family, or buying that nice house in the suburbs. Whatever I claim to own, it will be as nothing if I don’t first genuinely own myself.
If I don’t expunge my vices, they will continue to assail me, wherever I happen to go, and with whomever I happen to rub shoulders.
—Reflection written in 3/2013
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