Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings. Let us stop wanting what we once wanted. For my part, I make it my business, now that I am old, not to want the same things I wanted as a boy. My days go toward this one thing, my nights toward this, this is my task, this my constant thought: to put an end to my old faults. What I am working toward is that each day should stand for a whole lifetime. And, by Hercules, I do not seize it as though it were my last, but I look upon it as though it could indeed be my last.
It is in this spirit that I write you this letter, as though death were about to summon me away at the very moment of writing. I am ready to depart, and for that very reason I enjoy life, because I do not fret too much over how much longer it will last. Before old age I took care to live well; in old age, to die well. And dying well means dying gladly.
Take care never to do anything against your will. Whatever will have to be done regardless, if you resist it, is no longer a necessity once you do it willingly. This is what I mean: the man who accepts orders willingly escapes the bitterest part of servitude—doing what he does not want to do. It is not the man commanded to do something who is wretched, but the man who does it unwillingly. So let us so compose our minds that we want whatever circumstance demands, and above all, that we contemplate our own end without sorrow.
We must prepare for death before we prepare for life. Life is sufficiently equipped, but we are greedy for the equipment of it; something always seems lacking to us, and always will: whether we have lived long enough is decided not by years or days, but by the mind. I have lived, dearest Lucilius, as long as was enough; I await death full and content. Farewell.