Learn joy, leave hope. Seneca, Epistles 3.23.1-3

Happiness that we want requires us to relinquish hopes whose outcomes lie beyond us. Learning to be happy means learning to let these hopes go, permanently, so that we can appreciate what is actually ours. We cannot enjoy the life we don't have. Let's not pursue it, then!

Putas me tibi scripturum quam humane nobiscum hiemps gerit, quae et remissa fuit et brevis, quam malignum ver sit, quam praeposterum frigus, et alias ineptias verba quaerentium? Ego vero aliquid quod et mihi et tibi prodesse possit scribam. Quid autem id erit nisi ut te exhorter ad bonam mentem? Huius fundamentum quod sit quaeris? ne gaudeas vanis. Fundamentum hoc esse dixi: culmen est. Ad summa pervenit qui scit quo gaudeat, qui felicitatem suam in aliena potestate non posuit; sollicitus est et incertus sui quem spes aliqua proritat, licet ad manum sit, licet non ex difficili petatur, licet numquam illum sperata deceperint.

Hoc ante omnia fac, mi Lucili: disce gaudere.

Existimas nunc me detrahere tibi multas voluptates qui fortuita summoveo, qui spes, dulcissima oblectamenta, devitandas existimo? immo contra nolo tibi umquam deesse laetitiam. Volo illam tibi domi nasci: nascitur si modo intra te ipsum fit. Ceterae hilaritates non implent pectus; frontem remittunt, leves sunt, nisi forte tu iudicas eum gaudere qui ridet: animus esse debet alacer et fidens et super omnia erectus.

Are you thinking I will write to you about the weather—how mild our winter is, since it just ended after only a short season; how savage the spring is proving, with its late cold spells—and other inanities folk utter when they are at a loss for words? Nay. I shall write something more profitable, more useful to you and to myself. What is the point of our correspondence if not to encourage a good mindset? Where does this begin, you ask? What is its foundation? Simple: take no joy in events of no substance. I said this was the foundation, but really it is the culmination. The man who knows how to take joy properly, who has placed his own happiness in no power but his own, has reached the peaks of human perfection. Meanwhile, the poor sot provoked by hopes he cannot own is ever anxious and uncertain, no matter what happens. Even when these hopes fail to deceive him, presenting themselves close at hand, ready to be sought with no trouble, he wavers and dithers.

This is your first lesson, then, Lucilius: learn to rejoice properly.

Do you suppose I'm out to drag you away from many true delights, because I undermine your participation in the gifts of Fortune, declaring that even our hopes, the sweetest pleasures we know, must be shunned? Not at all. My wish is all the opposite: that you should never lack joy. I want your joy to be born at home. This will only happen if it occurs within you. Moments of levity outside your control do not fill your breast. They merely shake your head a bit and blow away swiftly, unless perhaps you make the mistake of assuming that the man who laughs is truly joyful. Real joy requires a mind active and bold, and above all, built to stand.