Escape

Seneca, Moral Letters 85.16

So the wise man will develop virtue, if he may, in the midst of wealth, or, if not, in poverty; if possible, in his own country—if not, in exile; if possible, as a commander—if not, as a common soldier; if possible, in sound health—if not, enfeebled. 
 
Whatever fortune he finds, he will accomplish therefrom something noteworthy. 
 
Animal tamers are unerring; they take the most savage animals, which may well terrify those who encounter them, and subdue them to the will of man; not content with having driven out their ferocity, they even tame them so that they dwell in the same abode. 
 
The trainer puts his hand into the lion’s mouth; the tiger is kissed by his keeper. The tiny Aethiopian orders the elephant to sink down on its knees, or to walk the rope. 
 
Similarly, the wise man is a skilled hand at taming evils. Pain, want, disgrace, imprisonment, exile—these are universally to be feared; but when they encounter the wise man, they are tamed. Farewell. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 85 
 
But doesn’t there have to be some limit, a bare minimum of conditions for me to work with? How can I be expected to bear such an intensity of hardship and suffering? There must surely be a point when it all becomes too much. 
 
In the depths of despair, I cannot blame anyone for thinking and feeling this way. I have been there myself, and I know very well how those impressions will frantically rush about, or they will firmly attach themselves in the most inauspicious of places. 
 
Yet I also know how quickly we can underestimate the strength of our understanding to bring meaning and purpose to even the fiercest of emotions. Ironically, I find the trick to not be in applying more brute force, but rather in yielding to an inner calm. 
 
It is an illusion to believe that a happy life demands more money, or greater authority, or even better health. Take both their presence and their absence as matters of indifference, in the total awareness that they can never define the dignity of our choices. I have often been at my best when everything else seemed to fall apart, and I have often been at my worst when the perks seemed to fall into my lap. It was estimation that made all the difference. 
 
Apply, rinse, and repeat: change the measures, and you change the outcomes. Once I no longer care so much for the accidents, I can finally get to work on the essence. 
 
It is hard enough for me to live in a precarious equilibrium with my headstrong tomcat, so I don’t foresee any animal training in my future.; I am content when he is being himself, and he is content when I am scratching his head. Nevertheless, the analogy is fitting, because the appetitive, however savage or intimidating, calls out for the guidance of the rational, however gentle or modest. Serenity is ultimately about taming those lions, tigers, and bears running around inside of our souls.
 
Those pesky syllogisms can only be of some use when they aid us in forming our daily habits, which, in turn, allow us to become our own masters. When I cry out in fear and distress over the circumstances, it is a sign that I have not yet come to fully know myself. 

—Reflection written in 1/2014 

Sayings of Heraclitus 92

To the soul belongs the self-multiplying Logos. 

IMAGE: Hendrick ter Brugghen, Heraclitus (1628) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 85.15

Besides, he is not prevented from helping others, even at the time when constraining circumstances press him down. Because of his poverty he is prevented from showing how the State should be handled; but he teaches, nonetheless, how poverty should be handled. His work goes on throughout his whole life. 
 
Thus no fortune, no external circumstance, can shut off the wise man from action. For the very thing which engages his attention prevents him from attending to other things. He is ready for either outcome: if it brings goods, he controls them; if evils, he conquers them.
 
So thoroughly, I mean, has he schooled himself that he makes manifest his virtue in prosperity as well as in adversity, and keeps his eyes on virtue itself, not on the objects with which virtue deals. Hence neither poverty, nor pain, nor anything else that deflects the inexperienced and drives them headlong, restrains him from his course.
 
Do you suppose that he is weighed down by evils? He makes use of them. It was not of ivory only that Phidias knew how to make statues; he also made statues of bronze. If you had given him marble, or a still meaner material, he would have made of it the best statue that the material would permit. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 85 
 
When they tell me that I’m going to need to get all kinds of other stuff before I can ever do any of the good stuff, I fear there is some confusion about the nature of the good, and thus an unhealthy fixation on hoarding more stuff. 
 
A preference for comfort and convenience is surely reasonable, but I grow suspicious when a pursuit of the easy way becomes an excuse to hesitate on committing to the right way. If acting on my conscience requires no risk, and cannot involve the prospect of some other loss, then I should hardly dare to call it a conscience. 
 
You say it is impossible to act with charity without first being rich? Or that a danger to my own security releases me from caring for my neighbor? I would ask you to consider whether the virtues are about spending money or about spending ourselves. Even if I don’t have the means to buy you a new car, I always have the means to offer you unconditional love, and that is, after all, the force that really makes the world go around. 
 
I can be prudent, brave, temperate, and just under any circumstances, and I would dare to suggest that there are times when the richest opportunities for excellence can actually arise from situations of poverty instead of prosperity. 
 
With my priorities in order, I can be happy with more or with less, because character is about quality, and not about quantity. With the end clearly in sight, I can take both privilege and adversity as benefits, because everything in this whole wide world becomes a means to living well. 
 
The inspired artist, like Phidias, will gladly work in a variety of mediums to express his message. I knew a man who one day ran out of blocks of wood for whittling, and I then found him hard at work on a bar of soap. I still have the greatest admiration for the clever fellow who realized he did not need briar root to craft a pipe, because he could smoke his tobacco out of a corncob. Once we are at peace within ourselves, we are at peace with whatever Fortune throws our way. 
 
Draw wisdom out of ignorance. Build fortitude in the face of cowardice. Increase temperance in times of deprivation. Practice justice whenever and wherever you have been wronged. Affluence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

—Reflection written in 1/2014 

IMAGE: Jozsef Dorffmeister, Phidias Sculpting the Bust of Zeus (1802)