Take it easy. Seneca, Epistles 2.20.12-13

Nature made us to live with little, Seneca contends. Our lives should thus incorporate experiences that teach us to remain poor, and content with poverty. The poverty he has in mind is not material deprivation per se: it includes adequate food, shelter, and society, but no gratuitous ostentation. Babies offer us good examples of real happiness by being content with milk and clean diapers.

Ceterum magnae indolis est ad ista non properare tamquam meliora, sed praeparari tamquam ad facilia. Et sunt, Lucili, facilia; cum vero multum ante meditatus accesseris, iucunda quoque; inest enim illis, sine qua nihil est iucundum, securitas. Necessarium ergo iudico id quod tibi scripsi magnos viros saepe fecisse, aliquos dies interponere quibus nos imaginaria paupertate exerceamus ad veram; quod eo magis faciendum est quod deliciis permaduimus et omnia dura ac difficilia iudicamus. Potius excitandus e somno et vellicandus est animus admonendusque naturam nobis minimum constituisse. Nemo nascitur dives; quisquis exit in lucem iussus est lacte et panno esse contentus: ab his initiis nos regna non capiunt. Vale.

In sum, it is a mark of great character not merely to hasten toward better things, but to prepare oneself for things easy to provide. Life does offer such things, Lucilius, and when you come to them prepared, after careful meditation, they are pleasant as well as easy. In them we find the stability essential to our delight in anything. Thus I judge it necessary that we do what great men have done, as I have written to you already: namely, that we should interrupt our schedule regularly with a few days of voluntary poverty, practicing (as it were) for the real thing. This habit is all the more to be embraced as we find ourselves thoroughly saturated with luxuries, to the point that we deem all things hard and difficult. We must summon our souls from sleep, rousing them and reminding them that nature has made our lot small—the least of all things, in fact. No one is born wealthy. Every child that escapes from the womb into the light is obliged to be content with milk and a diaper. From these beginnings no realms ever remove us. Farewell.