Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
[1] So you feel outraged by something, or you complain, and you fail to see that the only bad thing in these situations is the one fact that you feel outraged and complain? If you ask me, nothing is wretched for a man except thinking there is something in the nature of things that is wretched. I will not put up with myself on the day I can no longer put up with something. I'm in poor health: that's part of my lot. My household has come down with illness, expenses have piled up, the house has cracked, losses, injuries, hard labor, fears have all come running at me: that's what usually happens. No — put it stronger: that's what had to happen. [2] These things are decreed, not accidents. If you believe me at all, I am laying bare to you right now my deepest feelings: in the face of everything that looks adverse and harsh, I have shaped myself like this — I do not merely obey god, I agree with him; I follow him from the heart, not because I have to. Nothing will ever befall me that I greet with a gloomy face, with a scowl; I will never pay any tax unwillingly. All the things over which we groan, which we dread, are taxes on life: don't hope for exemption from them, my dear Lucilius, and don't ask for it. [3] A pain in the bladder has troubled you, letters have arrived that weren't very sweet, one loss after another — let me come closer to it — you've been afraid for your life. What, didn't you know that this is what you were wishing for when you wished for old age? All these things belong to a long life, the way dust and mud and rain belong to a long road. [4] 'But I wanted to live, while being spared all its inconveniences.' Such an effeminate remark is unworthy of a man. Consider how you'd like me to take this wish of mine: I make it with a great spirit, not merely a good one — may neither the gods nor the goddesses arrange for fortune to pamper you. [5] Ask yourself this: if some god gave you the power to choose, would you rather live in the meat market or in the camp? And yet living, Lucilius, is soldiering. And so those who get tossed about, who go up and down through toilsome and steep ground, who undertake the most dangerous campaigns, are brave men, the front-rank fighters of the camp; while those whom a rank ease keeps soft while others labor are turtledoves, safe only to be despised. Farewell.