Seneca, Moral Letters 54.1

Letter 54: On asthma and death 

 
My ill-health had allowed me a long furlough, when suddenly it resumed the attack. 
 
"What kind of ill-health?" you say. 
 
And you surely have a right to ask; for it is true that no kind is unknown to me. But I have been consigned, so to speak, to one special ailment. I do not know why I should call it by its Greek name; for it is well enough described as "shortness of breath." Its attack is of very brief duration, like that of a squall at sea; it usually ends within an hour. Who indeed could breathe his last for long?
 
I have passed through all the ills and dangers of the flesh; but nothing seems to me more troublesome than this. And naturally so; for anything else may be called illness; but this is a sort of continued "last gasp." Hence physicians call it "practicing how to die." For some day the breath will succeed in doing what it has so often essayed.
 
Do you think I am writing this letter in a merry spirit, just because I have escaped? It would be absurd to take delight in such supposed restoration to health, as it would be for a defendant to imagine that he had won his case when he had succeeded in postponing his trial. 
 
Yet in the midst of my difficult breathing, I never ceased to rest secure in cheerful and brave thoughts. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 54 
 
The title our translator has attached to this letter makes me feel like I am about to read something closer to Existentialism than to Stoicism, but as soon as Seneca gets going, I see how he is taking something that is terribly painful, and then finding the sort of comfort in it that only a commitment to Nature can provide.
 
I have, thankfully, never had to bear any chronic problems with my breathing, and the best way I can relate to his description is an experience from my childhood, when I panicked in some deep water at the beach, and in my thrashing about swallowed a lungful of ocean. Being denied the power to take in air, even for a brief moment, is the closest I can imagine to how it feels to be dying. 
 
At around the same time, I knew a fellow in elementary school who suffered from severe asthma, and while I was too young to understand the specifics of his plight, I couldn’t help but notice three distinct qualities to his life: he clearly felt intense distress during an attack, he nevertheless bore it with incredible courage and calm, and I am fairly certain this helped him to be one the kindest and most patient people I have ever known. When the usual bullies mocked him about his condition, he would simply smile. 
 
Hardship can destroy a man, if only he so chooses, and hardship can also uplift a man, if only he so chooses. There is something truly noble about a willingness to be of good cheer in the presence of pain. I aspire to it all the more when I see everyday people find such peace in the midst of such agony. 
 
A part about my young friend that especially moved me was how he was quite aware that there would, sooner or later, be further attacks, any one of which might mean the end for him, and yet he always had the inner strength to endure it all with dignity. 
 
I have complained enough about a broken heart, or a throbbing head, or a shattered limb, and I know that I can be a much better man than I have so far been. That this or that has happened is made tolerable, and even redemptive, with a firmness of character, which remains constant in the awareness that every single circumstance is an opportunity for virtue and for joy. 

—Reflection written in 4/2013