Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
I make inquiries about you, and I ask everyone who comes from your part of the world what you are doing, where you are living, and with whom. You cannot deceive me: I am with you. Live as though I were going to hear of whatever you do - no, as though I were going to see it. Do you want to know what pleases me most in what I hear about you? That I hear nothing - that most of the people I question don't know what you're doing.
This is a healthy sign: not associating with people unlike yourself, people who want different things. I do have confidence that you cannot be twisted aside, and that you will hold to your purpose even if a crowd of people trying to entice you surrounds you. What is it, then, that I fear? Not that they will change you, but that they will hold you back. And even someone who merely delays you does great harm, especially given how short life is - and we make it shorter still through our own inconsistency, constantly beginning it afresh, over and over; we tear it into little pieces and mangle it.
So hurry, dearest Lucilius, and consider how much speed you would add if an enemy were pressing at your back, if you suspected cavalry approaching and closing on the heels of those in flight. That is exactly what is happening - you are being pressed. Speed up and get clear, bring yourself to safety, and think from time to time how fine a thing it is to complete your life before death, and then to await, free of care, whatever part of your time remains, owing nothing to yourself, settled in possession of a happy life which does not grow happier by being longer.
Oh, when will you see that time when you know that time has nothing to do with you, when you will be calm and untroubled, careless of tomorrow, utterly filled and satisfied with yourself! Do you want to know what makes people greedy for the future? No one has yet come into possession of himself. And so your parents wished other things for you; but I, in turn, wish for you contempt of all the things they wished you an abundance of. Their prayers plunder many people so as to enrich you; whatever is transferred to you must be taken away from someone else.
I wish for you possession of yourself, so that your mind, tossed about by wandering thoughts, may finally come to rest and be settled - so that it may be content with itself and, having understood the true goods, which are possessed the moment they are understood, may have no need of the addition of more years. That man alone has risen above all necessities, is discharged from service and free, who has lived his life to its completion while still alive.