Mature friendship & wisdom. Seneca 4.35

Seneca wants to meet Lucilius in person, and uses this invitation as an excuse to compare friendship with love, and to discuss the total calm characteristic of a Stoic sage. Love cannot be friendship, he says, because lovers harm as friends never will. The perfection of philosophy, meanwhile, requires us to cultivate a mind that has learned by experience to avoid changing its wants, or will, constantly. Wanting the same things, regardless of fleeting circumstance (good or bad or indifferent), is a sign of mature wisdom.

Cum te tam valde rogo ut studeas, meum negotium ago: habere amicum volo, quod contingere mihi, nisi pergis ut coepisti excolere te, non potest. Nunc enim amas me, amicus non es. 'Quid ergo? haec inter se diversa sunt?' immo dissimilia. Qui amicus est amat; qui amat non utique amicus est; itaque amicitia semper prodest, amor aliquando etiam nocet. Si nihil aliud, ob hoc profice, ut amare discas. Festina ergo dum mihi proficis, ne istuc alteri didiceris. Ego quidem percipio iam fructum, cum mihi fingo uno nos animo futuros et quidquid aetati meae vigoris abscessit, id ad me et tua, quamquam non multum abest, rediturum; sed tamen re quoque ipsa esse laetus volo. Venit ad nos ex iis quos amamus etiam absentibus gaudium, sed id leve et evanidum: conspectus et praesentia et conversatio habet aliquid vivae voluptatis, utique si non tantum quem velis sed qualem velis videas. Affer itaque te mihi, ingens munus, et quo magis instes, cogita te mortalem esse, me senem. 

Propera ad me, sed ad te prius. Profice et ante omnia hoc cura, ut constes tibi. Quotiens experiri voles an aliquid actum sit, observa an eadem hodie velis quae heri: mutatio voluntatis indicat animum natare, aliubi atque aliubi apparere, prout tulit ventus. Non vagatur quod fixum atque fundatum est: istud sapienti perfecto contingit, aliquatenus et proficienti provectoque. Quid ergo interest? hic commovetur quidem, non tamen transit, sed suo loco nutat; ille ne commovetur quidem. Vale.

When I beseech you so boldly to study, I am shamelessly pursuing my own interest. I want to have a true friend in you, and this cannot happen if you fail to carry through as you have begun, improving and perfecting your character. At the moment, though you love me, you are not really a friend. “What? Are friendship & love different things?” Yes. They are not even similar to one another. A friend is one who loves you, but every person that loves you is not thereby a friend. Friendship is always a benefit to you, but love sometimes harms. If there's nothing else for you here, at least profit from this observation, that you may learn how to love. Hasten to learn while you're making good time with me, so that you don't have to finish the course with someone else. I can see the fruit of our relationship already almost ripe, looking forward to the moment when our minds will become one, and the vigor that mine lacks can be supplied from your store of vitality, which is not missing as much as mine. But I'm certainly willing to rest content with what we've already achieved. Joy comes to us from those we love, even when they are absent, but that joy is small and fleeting. There is vivid pleasure in seeing the other face to face, with presence and conversation, so that you see not merely the person, but the qualities that render him dear. Get down here, then! What a mighty gift that would be, for us! To speed your journey, consider that you are mortal, and I am old.

Hurry to my place, but first to your own. Secure your position, with an eye to this above all else: that you should meet with your own approval. As often as you want to know whether you've actually achieved anything, consider whether you want the same things today as yesterday. The will that changes indicates a mind that wavers, tossing to and fro as though driven by the wind. What is fixed and founded doesn't wander. Such total calm is the situation of the sage whose wisdom is complete, and it occasionally befalls adepts who have advanced far down the path. What is the difference, then, between the master and an apprentice? The latter, when his spirit is shaken, refrains from changing his position, keeping his will in one place, though it waver; the former isn't even moved. Farewell.