Seneca explained that everyone who is born enters into a contract with life, and part of that contract involves accepting that certain things will happen. And when it comes to these inconveniences, there’s no point in complaining about them or being upset. One obvious instance of this is death, because everyone who is born is fated to die. Rather than moan or groan about your impending death, you should accept it peacefully, and see that it’s part of life itself.
In one of his funniest remarks, Epictetus said that if someone has a runny nose, it’s just silly to complain about it. Because the universe has given us two hands, it’s better to wipe your nose instead.
In his Letters, Seneca portrays his friend Lucilius as being something of a complainer. And in several letters, Seneca, like the good Stoic therapist he was, helps Lucilius see the futility of complaining. For example, at the beginning of Letter 96, Seneca writes back to Lucilius, and explains why his complaining is wrong:
You are still upset about something—you still complain. Don’t you see that the only bad thing in these situations is your own annoyance and complaining? If you ask me, nothing can be upsetting for anyone unless he thinks something perfectly natural should be upsetting. I will no longer tolerate myself on the day I cannot tolerate something else.14
Seneca then describes the annoying events everyone must face as merely being “the taxes of being alive”:
I will accept whatever happens to me without growing sad or showing an unhappy face. I will pay all my taxes without complaint. All the things at which we groan, and from which we recoil, are just the taxes of life—things, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope or seek to avoid. A long life includes all these things, just as a long journey includes dust, mud, and rain.15
For Seneca, it makes no sense that people complain about trivial things that should be expected, rather than living in agreement with nature and accepting the inevitable bumps on the road of life:
To become upset about these things is as laughable as complaining about getting splashed in public or stepping in some mud. Our experience of life is like being in a bathhouse, in a crowd, or on a journey. Some things will be thrown at you and others will strike you by accident. . . . It is amid mishaps like this that you must make this rugged journey.16
As he notes, “We shouldn’t be surprised by any of the things we are born to encounter. Nor should we complain, because they are faced by everyone.”17
AMOR FATI: LOVE YOUR FATE
The nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used the phrase amor fati, “love your fate,” but the idea goes back to the Stoics. Seneca said that the Stoic should “experience whatever happens as though you wanted it to happen to you,” because the universe approved of these events. “Crying, complaining, and moaning,” he wrote, “are rebellion” against the good order of the universe that brought us into being, and the laws of nature that actively maintain the world.18 This is just like the advice of Epictetus, quoted earlier: “Want things to happen to you as they do, and not as you desire them to.”
But the most beautiful expression of amor fati, at least in my mind, comes from these loving lines of Marcus Aurelius, which almost resemble a prayer:
Every thing that is harmonious with you, oh Universe, suits me also. Nothing is too early or too late for me that is timely for you. Everything that your seasons bring is fruit for me, oh Nature. All things are from you, in you, and all things return to you.19
That is certainly a case of following nature and celebrating its wisdom and goodness, coming from a man who experienced a vast amount of personal suffering. (Of his thirteen children, only five survived until adulthood.) We can sense in these words the deep sense of gratitude Marcus Aurelius felt for everything he had received from the beautiful and generous universe, of which he, too, was a part.
For a Stoic, everything we have from the universe is a gift, something on loan to us, which we will one day need to return. But our underlying mindset should be one of gratitude. Because even if we stumble on life’s journey or get splashed by a bit of mud, that’s no reason to complain about the beautiful world that brought us into being.
CHAPTER 8
The Battle Against Fortune: How to Survive Poverty and Extreme Wealth
The poor person is not someone who has too little, but someone who always craves more.
—Seneca, Letters 2.6
RIDING FORTUNE’S ROLLER COASTER
Everyone has some interest in money. And why not? We all have bills to pay. But how much money is too little? How much is excessive? Everyone will have his or her own views about this, but Seneca’s are especially interesting. He was one of the wealthiest people during his time, yet he was keenly aware of the psychological and moral dangers involved in the pursuit of financial success. He also experienced losing half his wealth, practically overnight. On Fortune’s roller coaster, what goes up often comes down.
Fortuna was a Roman goddess, and, as noted, sometimes I uppercase the term Fortune since, for Seneca, it verged on being a cosmic power, like Fate. The Stoic problem with Fortune, whether good or bad, is that it’s not up to us or fully within our control. As Seneca pointed out, what Fortune gives you is not truly your own. It can be taken away. By contrast, that which is truly good—a well-developed character—comes from within and is ours to keep.
Seneca writes extensively about Fortune, leaving no doubt that it was his biggest enemy. “The high places,” he said, “are the ones struck by lightning.”1 He explains that people who suddenly become wealthy often lose their psychological balance. They “imagine that their good luck will never end and that their gains will not just continue but increase. Having forgotten this trampoline on which human affairs bounce up and down, they feel certain that chance will remain steady for them alone.”2
As we know, the world is full of stories about lottery winners who have lost all of their winnings. When someone obtains great wealth quickly, that doesn’t mean he or she has the skill, or mental equilibrium, to manage it. Back in the dot-com bubble days of the late 1990s, I knew an amateur stock trader who turned fifty thousand dollars into over a million in a very short period, and then lost it all. She was afraid of selling her stocks and then having to pay taxes on the profits. By that refusal to sell, she lost everything when the bubble collapsed. Similarly, there are many public stories of celebrities who have lost vast sums through high living, extravagance, and lack of moderation. As one of many possible examples, when he died Michael Jackson was between four hundred and five hundred million dollars in debt.3
In the Middle Ages, the Wheel of Fortune was a famous allegory of wealth’s unpredictability (see figure 5). In these illustrations, Fortune or Chance, often wearing a blindfold, rotates a wheel resembling a small Ferris wheel. The wheel lifts those stricken by poverty up from the bottom to the extreme wealth of kings, but it simultaneously drags the wealthy, at the top, back down to the level of beggars. As Seneca wrote, “Every rank in life is subject to change, and whatever befalls someone else could befall you too.”4 Also, since things swing back and forth, no one should be overly confident when things go well, or give up when things go poorly.5
Fig 5: The Wheel of Fortune. Lady Fortune’s wheel lifts those stricken with poverty up to the wealth of kings and drags the wealthy down into poverty.
Seneca himself was no stranger to the wild swings of Fortune. As I mentioned in the introduction to this book, he skyrocketed to wealth and fame as a Roman senator early in his career, only to be exiled to the island of Corsica for eight years by the Emperor Claudius. This involved Seneca losing half of his wealth and being separated from his wife, right after losing their only child. Then, after finally returning to Rome, Seneca achieved even greater fortune as adviser to the Emperor Nero.