Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] Do you think this has happened to you alone, and are you amazed, as if at something unheard of, that so long a journey and so many changes of scenery have not shaken off your sadness and the heaviness of your mind? It is the mind you must change, not the sky over your head. Though you cross the vast sea, though—as our Vergil puts it—
your faults will follow you wherever you land. [2] Socrates said the same thing to a man making this very complaint: 'Why are you surprised that traveling does you no good, when you carry yourself along? The same thing that drove you out is pressing on you still.' What relief can new countries give? What good is acquaintance with cities and places? All that tossing about comes to nothing. You ask why this flight of yours does not help you? You are fleeing in your own company. The load on the mind must be set down; until then, no place will please you. [3] Picture your present condition as like that of the prophetess our Vergil brings on—already stirred and goaded, with a great deal of breath in her that is not her own:
the seer raves, trying whether she can shake the great god out of her breast.
You go here, you go there, to shake off a weight that sits on you—a weight the jolting itself makes more troublesome, the way cargo in a ship presses less when it lies still, while a load shifting unevenly sinks the side it has settled on all the faster. Whatever you do, you do against yourself; the very movement harms you, for you are shaking a sick man. [4] But once you have removed that evil, every change of place will turn delightful. Banish yourself to earth's farthest edge, plant yourself in whatever corner of barbarian country you like: that lodging, whatever it is, will be a welcoming home. Who you are when you arrive matters more than where you arrive; and so we should mortgage the mind to no single place. Live with this conviction: 'I was not born for one corner; my homeland is this whole world.' [5] If that were clear to you, you would stop marveling that you get no help from the variety of regions you keep moving to out of boredom with the last: the first would have pleased you if you believed every one of them yours. As it is, you are not traveling—you are drifting, driven along, swapping place after place, though what you are hunting—the good life—is on offer everywhere. [6] Can anything be as noisy and churning as the forum? Yet even there one can live quietly, if one has to. But given a free choice of station, I would flee even the sight and the neighborhood of the forum from a long way off; for just as unhealthy districts try even the strongest constitution, so certain places are not very wholesome for a good mind that is still convalescing and not yet at full strength. [7] I part ways with those who wade into the middle of the surf, who applaud a stormy life and grapple every day, great-souled, with difficulties. The wise man will bear that sort of thing, not choose it; he will prefer peace to combat. It profits little to have thrown out your own vices if you must brawl with other people's. [8] 'Thirty tyrants,' someone says, 'hemmed Socrates in, and his spirit stayed unbroken.' What does the count of masters matter? Slavery is one thing only; the man who has despised it is free in however large a crowd of masters.
[9] It is time to stop—but not before I have paid the toll. 'The beginning of rescue is the recognition of the fault.' Epicurus seems to me to have put this superbly; for a man who does not know he is going wrong has no wish to be set right. You must catch yourself before you can correct yourself. [10] Some people boast of their vices: do you imagine anyone gives a thought to a cure who counts his diseases as virtues? So arraign yourself as hard as you can; investigate yourself. Play first the prosecutor's part, then the judge's, and last of all the advocate's who pleads for mercy. Sometimes give yourself offense. Farewell.