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 writes this letter soon after coming down with an illness and escaping to the countryside to recover.
1. Travelling does not make us better people
“Travelling cannot give us judgement, or shake off our errors; it merely holds our attention for a moment by a certain novelty… it will not make us better.”
“As long as we are ignorant of what we should avoid or seek, or of what is necessary or superfluous, or of what is right or wrong, we will not be travelling, but merely wandering.”
Travel can often be seen as an escape—as a break from our worries, challenges, errors, and faults—but we bring all of that with us. Travel should be no substitute for what’s most important: pursuing wisdom and virtue.
2. Be careful in determining what is good
“Suppose that you hold wealth to be a good: poverty will then distress you, and—which is pitiable—it will be an imaginary poverty. For you may be rich, and nevertheless, because your neighbour is richer, you suppose yourself to be poor exactly by the same amount in which you fall short of your neighbour. You may deem an official position a good; you will be vexed at another’s appointment to the consulship. Your ambition will be so frenzied that you will regard yourself last in the race if there is anyone in front of you.”
There is always going to be someone richer, someone smarter, someone luckier.
Comparison is a guaranteed misery.
3. Two quotes I’m still pondering
- “If you are wise, mingle these two elements: do not hope without despair, or despair without hope.”
- “Liberty cannot be gained for nothing. If you set a high value on liberty, you must set a low value on everything else.”