Letters From a Stoic - Seneca: Summary of all 124 Letters
It is better, says Seneca, to get no return than than no benefits. It is much better to learn some type of a lesson rather than to get something out of it for yourself. After a shipwreck, sailors tend to the sea again. After hardship so shall you tend to your purpose once again. Help and harm shall be analyzed carefully, where our soul must arrange the benefits based on the intentionality. But do not set an equal monetary amount to benefits and harms. Set a value higher in benefits.
The ungrateful man tortures and torments himself; he hates the gifts which he has accepted, because he must make a return for them, and he tries to belittle their value, but he really enlarges and exaggerates the injuries which he has received. And what is more wretched than a man who forgets his benefits and clings to his injuries?
Gratitude is a great weapon for the improvement solely of ourselves. Otherwise evil will torment itself, leading to our demise.
I prefer to be in trouble rather than in luxury; and you had better interpret the term “in trouble” as popular usage is wont to interpret it: living a “hard,” “rough,” “toilsome” life. We are wont to hear the lives of certain men praised as follows, when they are objects of unpopularity: “So-and-So lives luxuriously”; but by this they mean: “He is softened by luxury.”
Seneca seems to describe here the facade of living in trouble and that it is not something that is entirely unpleasant. Luxury seems to degrade the edge off of a man, softening him as if he is transforming into some type of dough.
Through practice, the soul is made weak until it likes the lazy environment in which it abides. The mind will never rise to virtue if it believes death is an evil.
We shall live as if we were in the plain sight of all men, and we shall think as if everyone could read our minds and look into our souls. Drunk to Seneca means the following two different ideas: one who is loaded with wine, and one who is a slave to the habit. Drunkenness unveils all vices and removes the sense of shame that we feel in committing poor acts. It does not create vice, but instead brings it into view. The vice comes to the front as we slowly forget who we are.