Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Do you suppose I'm going to write and tell you how mild the winter has been with us, gentle and short, how nasty the spring is, how out-of-season the cold, and all the other trivialities people reach for when they're short of something to say? No, I'll write something that can do some good, for me and for you. And what could that be, except to urge you toward a sound mind? You ask what its foundation is? Not to take joy in empty things. I called it the foundation; it is really the summit. The man who has reached the top is the one who knows what he should rejoice in, who has not placed his happiness in the power of anything outside himself. Anyone lured on by some hope is anxious and unsure of himself, even if the thing is within reach, even if it's not hard to get, even if his hopes have never once let him down. Above everything else, my dear Lucilius, do this: learn to rejoice. You think, I suppose, that I am taking a great many pleasures away from you, when I dismiss the gifts of chance and think that hopes, however sweet a diversion, ought to be avoided. Quite the opposite: I don't want gladness ever to fail you. I want it to be born in your own house. And it will be, if only it arises from within yourself. Other kinds of cheer don't fill the heart; they merely smooth the brow, they're superficial, unless you count as joy the man who merely laughs. The spirit ought to be lively and confident and lifted above everything else. Believe me, real joy is a serious business. Do you really think that a man with a relaxed, cheerful little face, as these pampered types put it, can look on death with contempt, throw his house open to poverty, keep a tight rein on his pleasures, and rehearse patience under pain? Whoever turns these things over in his mind is in the midst of great joy, but not a charming one. It's in possession of this joy that I want you to be: it will never fail you, once you've found where it comes from. The yield of the cheaper metals lies on the surface; the richest ores are those whose veins lie deep, promising an ever fuller return to the one who keeps digging. The things that delight the crowd give a thin and superficial pleasure, and any joy that comes from outside lacks a foundation. The joy I'm speaking of, the one I'm trying to lead you to, is solid, and opens up more the deeper you go. Do this, I beg you, my dearest Lucilius: do the one thing that can make a man happy. Fling away and trample underfoot everything that glitters on the outside, everything promised you by another or through another; look instead to the true good, and take your joy from what is your own. But what does 'your own' mean here? It means yourself, and the best part of yourself. Don't go believing your poor little body counts as a good; the craving for the true good is a safe one. You ask what that good is, or where it comes from? I'll tell you: from a good conscience, from honorable purposes, from right actions, from contempt for the gifts of chance, from a calm, unbroken course of life following a single path. Those who leap from one plan to another, or who don't even leap but get swept along by some accident, how can they possess anything fixed or lasting, suspended and adrift as they are? Few are the people who arrange themselves and their affairs by design; the rest are like objects floating on a river: they don't go, they are carried. Some are caught by a gentler current and swept along more softly; others are seized by a more violent one; others are set down near the bank as the current slackens; others are flung out to sea by the torrent's force. That's why we must settle on what we want, and hold to it.
Here is the place to pay off the debt I owe you. I can hand you a saying of your friend Epicurus and so clear this letter of its obligation: 'It is a wretched thing always to be starting life over'; or, if the sense can be put more sharply this way: 'They live badly who are always only beginning to live.' You ask why? Because for such people life is always incomplete. And a man who has only just begun to live cannot stand ready for death. What we must aim for is to have lived enough; and no one achieves that who is, at this very moment, still just setting his life in motion. Don't imagine such people are few; they are practically everyone. Some, in fact, only begin when it's time to stop. If you find that strange, I'll add something that will astonish you even more: some people stopped living before they ever began. Farewell.