Note: This post is part of a weekly series called ‘Seneca Sundays’. Each week, I reflect on one of Seneca’s ‘Moral Letters to Lucilius’, and summarise the most practical and useful principles to share with you.

In this letter, Seneca encourages us to pursue wisdom and virtue as early as possible. And to value wisdom and virtue above the trappings of wealth and status.

1. As long as we live, we should keep learning how to live

I’ve often heard people say they’re no good at learning, or that it’s been too long since they were in school that they’ve forgotten how to learn. I’m saddened when I hear this because the vast majority of our learning happens whilst living, not in the classroom.

Seneca says we should “keep learning as long as we are ignorant.” Which is another way to say: keep learning until your last breath.

2. Virtue is the only good

Virtue is living and acting in a way that shows high moral standards.

Seneca and the Stoics believed that learning how to live a virtuous life—being honourable in our thoughts, words, and deeds—is the only good worth striving for.

“In the case of man… it is not pertinent how many acres he ploughs, how much money he has out at interest, how many callers attend his receptions, how costly is the couch on which he lies, but how good he is… A good man will do what he think will be honourable for him to do, even if it involves toil; he will do it even if it involves peril… Nothing will deter him from that which is honourable, and nothing will tempt him into baseness.”

3. Don’t get trapped by trappings

Seneca says that a person isn’t tall because they stand on a mountain, nor is a large statue short just because it is placed in a deep well.

So why do we then “value no man at what he is, but add to the man himself the trappings in which he is clothed.”

We should evaluate a person without their trappings—of wealth and status—only then will we learn if their greatness is borrowed or their own.

4. Hasten and learn wisdom as early as possible

It’s important to remember Seneca wrote these letters in the last 2 years of his life during his mid-sixties.

Despite his long life at the heights of public service in Ancient Rome, he still felt he had a lot to learn. He thus implored the younger Lucilius to “hasten, lest you yourself be compelled to learn in your old age, as is the case with me.”

Seneca’s message to all of us: wherever you are, start now.