Managing Expectations. Seneca 1.5.6-7

Seneca shares one of his favorite themes: that ethics and values are best regarded in terms of how we do, rather than what. Process over results. If our process is bad, even good results will not help us. If we have great hopes, behind them comes great fear. Better to relinquish the hope than invite the fear. You can hear the Latin <here>.

Quid ergo? eadem faciemus quae ceteri? nihil inter nos et illos intererit? Plurimum: dissimiles esse nos vulgo sciat qui inspexerit propius; qui domum intraverit nos potius miretur quam supellectilem nostram. Magnus ille est qui fictilibus sic utitur quemadmodum argento, nec ille minor est qui sic argento utitur quemadmodum fictilibus; infirmi animi est pati non posse divitias.

Sed ut huius quoque diei lucellum tecum communicem, apud Hecatonem nostrum inveni cupiditatum finem etiam ad timoris remedia proficere. Desines inquit timere, si sperare desieris. Dices, quomodo ista tam diversa pariter sunt? Ita est, mi Lucili: cum videantur dissidere, coniuncta sunt. Quemadmodum eadem catena et custodiam et militem copulat, sic ista quae tam dissimilia sunt pariter incedunt: spem metus sequitur.

What then? Shall we do the same as others do? Shall nothing come between us and them? No, for this is too much. Someone who looks at us carefully should see that we are not like the crowd. The guest in our home should wonder at us rather than our furniture. A great man uses earthenware as silver, nor is his neighbor any less for treating silver as earthenware. It is the mark of a weak mind to find wealth unbearable.

Let me share with you a little of the profit I have taken from this day: in the book of our Hecato (†) I have found that putting an end to desire offers relief from fear. 'You shall cease to fear,' he says, 'when you have ceased to hope.' 'How are two things so unlike each other related in this way?' you will respond. In this way, Lucilius: though they seem divergent, yet they are bound together. As one and the same chain holds prisoner and guard, joining them together, so do these different emotions occur in tandem: fear follows hope.

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(†) Hecato of Rhodes (floruit c. 100 BCE) was a Stoic philosopher who wrote many books, none of which survive. We know him only by quotations and anecdotes preserved elsewhere, in later authors like Cicero (On Duties 3.63), Seneca (elsewhere in these Epistles and in his treatise On Benefits), and Diogenes Laertius (especially the seventh book of his Lives of the Great Philosophers). From their representation of his work, it appears Hecato recognized virtue (ἀρετή) as that which produces rational goods, like justice, as opposed to indifferent ones, like health. He believed virtue was teachable.