Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings. When I urge you so strongly to pursue your studies, I am looking after my own business: I want to have a friend, and that cannot fall to me unless you go on cultivating yourself as you have begun. As things stand now, you love me, but you are not my friend. "What then? Are those two different things?" More than different - unlike. Whoever is a friend loves; whoever loves is not necessarily a friend. And so friendship is always beneficial, while love sometimes even does harm.
If for no other reason, make progress for this: so that you may learn to love. Hurry, then, while you are making progress for my sake, so that you do not end up having learned it for someone else's. As for me, I already reap the reward, when I picture to myself that we will one day share a single mind, and that whatever vigor has left my years will return to me from you too - though not much is missing from mine; but still I want to be glad in the reality itself as well.
Some joy comes to us even from those we love when they are absent, but it is slight and fleeting; the sight of them, their presence, conversation with them - these hold something of living pleasure, especially if you see not merely the person you want but the sort of person you want him to be. So bring yourself to me - a tremendous gift - and to press you on further, consider that you are mortal, and that I am old.
Hurry to me - but hurry to yourself first. Make progress, and above all take care of this: that you be consistent with yourself. Whenever you want to test whether anything has been accomplished, observe whether you want today the same things you wanted yesterday. A change of will shows that the mind is adrift, appearing now here, now there, as the wind carries it. What is fixed and well-founded does not wander. That belongs to the perfect sage, and to some degree also to the one making progress and advancing. What, then, is the difference? This one is stirred, but does not shift his ground - he only sways in place; that one is not even stirred at all. Farewell.