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.
Seneca spends most of this letter talking about blushing—yeah, it’s what you’re thinking: when our cheeks get red from embarrassment or modesty.
I didn’t find this topic to be interesting, compelling, or practical, but in the closing paragraphs of the letter Seneca turns to another topic which will be the focus of this post.
1. Choose a Mind Guardian to watch you
“Cherish some person of high character, and keep them ever before your eyes, living as if they were watching you.”
Seneca’s point is we’re likely to improve our behaviour if we “have a witness who stands near us when we are likely to do wrong,” even if that person is merely a guardian within our own minds.
I like to think of this person as a “Mind Guardian”.
2. Aspire to be a Mind Guardian for someone else
“Happy is the person who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts!”
This may seem like an arrogant ambition, but I actually think it’s something that naturally occurs in healthy relationships.
In the same way that I admire the compassion and consistency of my parents, they inspire me to try and be the same for others. Or how some of my friends are the ones who ask the most genuine questions, the thought of them challenges me to ask my own.
3. A Mind Guardian is much like a ruler; the measuring kind
A Mind Guardian is someone who helps us “regulate our character,” this is important because we “can never straighten that which is crooked unless we use a ruler.”
They’re a point of reference to help us know when we’re on track or off course.
“Happy are they who can so revere a person as to calm and regulate themselves by calling them to mind!”