Your money, or your life: choose one. Seneca, Epistles 3.22.9-12
Stoic retirement is about cashing out, not cashing in. Leisure is
lived, not purchased. Power and wealth will torment those who receive
them as goods to be retained.
Facile
est autem, mi Lucili, occupationes evadere, si occupationum pretia
contempseris; illa sunt quae nos morantur et detinent. Quid ergo?
tam magnas spes relinquam? ab ipsa messe discedam? nudum erit latus,
incomitata lectica, atrium vacuum? Ab his ergo inviti homines
recedunt et mercedem miseriarum amant, ipsas exsecrantur. Sic de
ambitione quo modo de amica queruntur, id est, si verum affectum
eorum inspicias, non oderunt sed litigant. Excute istos qui quae
cupiere deplorant et de earum rerum loquuntur fuga quibus carere non
possunt; videbis voluntariam esse illis in eo moram quod aegre ferre
ipsos et misere loquuntur. Ita est, Lucili: paucos servitus, plures
servitutem tenent.
Sed
si deponere illam in animo est et libertas bona fide placuit, in hoc
autem unum advocationem petis, ut sine perpetua sollicitudine id tibi
facere contingat, quidni tota te cohors Stoicorum probatura sit?
Omnes
Zenones et Chrysippi moderata, honesta, tua suadebunt. Sed si propter
hoc tergiversaris, ut circumspicias quantum feras tecum et quam magna
pecunia instruas otium, numquam exitum invenies: nemo cum sarcinis
enatat. Emerge ad meliorem vitam propitiis diis, sed non sic quomodo
istis propitii sunt quibus bono ac benigno vultu mala magnifica
tribuerunt, ob hoc unum excusati, quod ista quae urunt, quae
excruciant, optantibus data sunt.
It
is easy to escape jobs, dear Lucilius, if you have learned to despise
their wages. They are always delaying and detaining us. “What then?
Shall I abandon my hopes of a great career? Leave the ripe fruit of
my past efforts to rot? Am I to go naked, with no company in my
carriage (†) or my
halls?” From these things—clothing and the comfort of others'
company—men are unwilling to depart, and they love these wages of
miserable employment, though they hate their jobs. Thus they wind up
complaining about ambition as though she were a friend: in other
words, if you examine their real affect, they do not hate her; they
squabble with her, bitching like quarrelsome lovers. Watch closely
the wretches who deplore what they desire, and talk a big game about
fleeing stuff they could never do without. The more they claim to
suffer, the more they wallow in sorrow, the more you'll notice that
their choice to remain where they are is voluntary. This is the
truth, Lucilius: actual slavery holds relatively few folks captive,
in comparison with the multitudes who embrace their own bondage.
But
if your mind is determined to put the common bondage away, and
liberty has earned your love in good faith, then you ask my counsel
with one question in mind: what would all the company of Stoics
prescribe for you, what actions would they recommend, to achieve
freedom without constant anxiety? Every Zeno and Chrysippus will urge
that your affairs be modest, and honest. If you turn away from this
virtuous austerity because your gaze is caught by the stuff you carry
with you, by thoughts of the great sum of money you will require to
purchase leisure, then you will never find your escape. Nobody swims
away safe from life's shipwreck bearing loads. Rise from the deep to
a better life, with the favor and blessing of the gods. But do not
rise blessed with those folk on whom the gods confer the splendid
suffering of wealth and power. Do not take your portion under divine
smiles whose genuine goodness and kindness are saved from total
hypocrisy by this one fact alone, that the devastating gifts they
accompany torment only those who deliberately choose them.
---
(†)
The lectica was
a portable sedan chair in which Romans of the upper classes were
carried by servants.