Freedom. Seneca, Epistles 5.44.6-7

Seneca tells Lucilius the secret to becoming an authentically free person: he must recognize good and evil for himself, not deferring to society's judgement, and carefully cultivate the good in his own life without becoming fixated upon the means he uses to pursue it in any given moment.

Puta itaque te non equitem Romanum esse sed libertinum: potes hoc consequi, ut solus sis liber inter ingenuos. Quomodo? inquis. Si mala bonaque non populo auctore distinxeris. Intuendum est non unde veniant, sed quo eant. Si quid est quod vitam beatam potest facere, id bonum est suo iure; depravari enim in malum non potest. Quid est ergo in quo erratur, cum omnes beatam vitam optent? quod instrumenta eius pro ipsa habent et illam dum petunt fugiunt. Nam cum summa vitae beatae sit solida securitas et eius inconcussa fiducia, sollicitudinis colligunt causas et per insidiosum iter vitae non tantum ferunt sarcinas sed trahunt; ita longius ab effectu eius quod petunt semper abscedunt et quo plus operae impenderunt, hoc se magis impediunt et feruntur retro. Quod evenit in labyrintho properantibus: ipsa illos velocitas implicat. Vale.

Think of yourself, then, not as a Roman knight, but rather as a freedman (†). The latter is really the only condition you can actually achieve, in our society: that you become a lone free person amongst others, one member of the society of individuals genuinely as distinct from each other as they seem. “How do I do this?” you ask. By distinguishing good and evil without paying heed to the crowd. You must watch not whence things come, but whither they go. If there exists a thing that can make your life good, this thing is good by virtue of its own power; it cannot be diverted to evil consequence. Where do people go wrong, then, since everyone chooses the good life? In this: they grasp the means or instruments of that life instead of the life itself, so that they wind up fleeing what they are chasing after. Even though the crown of the good life is composure so firm that nothing can shake our trust in it, the hapless crowd collects causes for worry and drags its burdens along life's treacherous road rather than bear them bravely. So they always fall far short of the end they seek, and wherever they spend more effort, there especially they get in their own way and are carried backwards. Like those who rush to find the exit of a maze or labyrinth, so do these fools discover that their own hurry impedes them. Farewell.

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(†) Roman society in Seneca's time was divided into several classes: patricians (hereditary landed nobility), plebeians (hereditary tradesmen & commons), knights (hereditary cavalry turned businessmen), freedmen (former slaves and their descendants, often associated with the family of their last owners as clients), and slaves. In Seneca's radical reformulation here, there are really just two classes: the free, who have their own standards apart from society's, and the unfree, who must look constantly to society to judge for them because they are incapable, for whatever reason, of judging for themselves. Anyone—patrician, plebeian, knight, freedman, or slave—can be free, in the genuine sense; all real freedom requires is the guts to make and live by your own decisions, taking whatever consequences you get with a calm and unconquered mind. Anyone can be unfree, too: all this requires is anxiety that leads you to refer endlessly to others rather than own any decision for yourself.