Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Lessons of Serenity
Seneca taught that it is important not only to face but also to overcome difficulties.
He spoke extensively about the importance of control and self-discipline, asserting that passions and desires can lead to unhappiness, and true happiness is achieved through rational self-restraint and understanding of one's true needs.
Seneca saw death not as an end but as a legitimate part of life to be approached without fear or anxiety. This allows a person to live a fuller and more meaningful life, unburdened by useless fears.
Virtue and wisdom are the only true goods. Everything else is beyond our control and should not be the source of our happiness or unhappiness. A wise person can find happiness in simple things.
Procrastination and delay can lead to the loss of time. Time is what we have, but it is also what slips away from us every moment.
External and internal goods are different. Internal goods depend only on ourselves and cannot be taken away. We should not rely on external circumstances for our happiness and peace. Instead of striving for external goods, we should focus on internal ones, such as strengthening virtue and wisdom. In this way, we can achieve a lasting state of joy, regardless of what happens in our external life.
It is both possible and necessary to ask from external forces, as everything we ask for already belongs to us.
For calm confidence, fortune is not needed—true security comes from within. The role of luck in people's lives is an interesting question; many of us tend to underestimate its significance. We prefer to attribute success to personal qualities such as perseverance, hard work, or intelligence. The fundamental attribution error plays a key role here—this is the tendency to attribute success to internal factors, such as our efforts, rather than luck and external circumstances.
A great achievement cannot come cheaply. Spiritual growth, self-knowledge, and achieving inner peace require effort, sacrifice, and perhaps loss. But it is precisely these sacrifices that allow us to accumulate and strengthen our inner "self" and internal harmony.
Spiritual development and the pursuit of wisdom are integral aspects of a fulfilled life.
It is shameful not to walk but to drift with the current and, amid the whirlwind of affairs, ask: "How did I get here?"
External circumstances are unstable and often beyond our control. The inner world is what the wise person must focus on. Having attained harmony in the inner world, all external adversities will seem trivial. Seeking happiness in material goods, social status, or even relationships with others may lead to temporary satisfaction but does not guarantee long-lasting peace. On the contrary, investing effort in developing inner qualities such as wisdom, self-discipline, and compassion allows us to achieve a state of lasting well-being that does not depend on external factors.