Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Where is that good sense of yours? Where is your sharpness in seeing things for what they are? Where is your largeness of spirit? Does something this small touch you? Your slaves saw your busy schedule as their chance to run. If your friends were cheating you — fine, let them keep the name our mistake gave them, and be called friends so that they can be all the more disgraceful in not being ones... but as it is, what your affairs have lost are men who were wearing out your effort and who thought you a burden to others. None of this is unusual, none of it unexpected. Taking offense at such things is as absurd as complaining that you get splashed in the baths, or jostled in public, or muddied in the street. Life is on the same terms as the bathhouse, the crowd, the road: some things will be thrown at you, some will simply land on you. Living is not a delicate business. You've set out on a long road: you're bound to slip, collide, fall, get exhausted, and cry out 'Oh, death!' — that is, to lie. At one point you'll leave a companion behind, at another you'll bury one, at another you'll be afraid. It's through bumps like these that this rough road has to be traveled. Does he want to die? Let the mind be readied against everything. Let it know it has come to where the lightning thunders; let it know it has come to where
Grief and avenging Cares have made their beds,
and pale Diseases live, and sorrowing Old Age.
This is the company we have to live our life in. You can't escape these things; you can despise them — and you will despise them if you think about them often and take the future in advance. Everyone approaches more bravely what he has long prepared himself for, and stands up even to hardships if they were rehearsed beforehand. The unprepared man, by contrast, panics at the most trivial things. Our job is to make sure nothing takes us by surprise; and since everything weighs heavier for being new, constant reflection will guarantee that no evil finds you a raw recruit.
'My slaves have deserted me.' Another man they robbed, another they denounced, another they murdered, another they betrayed, another they beat, another they went after with poison, another with a false charge. Whatever you name has happened to many people... and after that come the many and various missiles aimed at us. Some are already lodged in us; some are quivering in flight and arriving at this very moment; some, on their way to others, graze us in passing. Let's be amazed at nothing we were born for — things no one should complain about, because they fall equally on everyone. Yes, I say equally: for even what a man escaped, he could have suffered. A fair law is not the one everyone has actually used, but the one enacted for everyone. Let the mind be ordered to accept fairness, and let us pay the taxes of mortality without complaint. Winter brings cold: we must shiver. Summer brings back heat: we must sweat. Bad weather tests the health: we must be sick. Somewhere a wild beast will cross our path — and a human being, more destructive than all the beasts. Water will snatch away one thing, fire another. We cannot change this constitution of things; what we can do is take on a great spirit, worthy of a good man, with which to endure bravely what chance brings and to be in agreement with nature. And nature governs this kingdom you see by means of change: clear skies follow cloud; seas are churned up after they have been calm; winds blow in their turn; day follows night; part of the sky rises, part sinks. The everlastingness of the world is made of opposites. It's to this law that our mind must be fitted; let it follow this, let it obey this, and let it hold that whatever happens had to happen, and not want to scold nature. The best course is to endure what you cannot mend, and to accompany without grumbling the god who is the author of everything that comes about: he is a bad soldier who follows his commander groaning. So let us receive our orders promptly and cheerfully, and not desert this march of the most beautiful of works, into which everything we shall suffer is woven; and let us address Jupiter, at whose helm this great mass is steered, the way our own Cleanthes addresses him in his very eloquent verses. I am allowed to turn them into our language by the example of Cicero, that most eloquent of men. If you like them, take them kindly; if you don't, you'll know that in this at least I was following Cicero's example.
Lead me, O father, ruler of the towering sky, wherever you have decided: I obey without delay; I am here, and ready. Suppose I refuse — then I will come along groaning, and, a bad man, I will suffer what a good man could have done. The fates lead the willing; the unwilling they drag.
So let us live, and so let us speak; may fate come upon us prepared and unflagging. This is the great mind, the one that has handed itself over to fate; and the small, degenerate one is the mind that struggles against it, thinks badly of the order of the universe, and would rather correct the gods than itself. Farewell.