@cogito.rebellion: part 446 | when have you last felt this one? the letter continues immediately after this: we should not hasten troubles, nor make troubles of things that are not troubles at all. and then the line the whole passage has been building toward: it is likely that some troubles will befall us; but it is not a present fact. seneca is not telling you not to feel pain. he is making a taxonomic point about the three ways suffering is multiplied beyond what the actual event warrants. the first is proportion. some things torment us more than they ought. the event is real, the pain is real, but the magnitude of the response is calibrated to something other than the size of the event. old injuries dressed in new clothes. accumulated fear finding an outlet. the mind running a small difficulty through the machinery built for catastrophe. the second is timing. some torment us before they ought. this is the one seneca returns to most across the letters. the suffering that arrives in anticipation, weeks or months before the event itself, sometimes for events that never arrive. you have lived the loss before it happened, and then lived it again when it does, and possibly a third time in the aftermath. one event, three payments. the third is the most acute. some torment us when they ought not. when the thing is not actually happening, when it may never happen, when it is a construction of the mind with no grounding in the present moment. purely imaginary suffering, which seneca treats not as trivial but as the most correctable of the three. who was seneca? lucius annaeus seneca was born in cordoba, spain around 4 bc and became one of the most powerful men in rome as advisor to the emperor nero. moral letters to lucilius, written in the final years of his life, are 124 letters to his friend lucilius on stoic philosophy and the art of living well. they are the most personal and accessible of all his writings. seneca was ordered to commit suicide by nero in 65 ce and did so with the composure he had spent his life recommending to others. #seneca #philosophy #darkacademiaaesthetic #stoicism #dailyquotes

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Monday 14 September 2026 20:57:38 GMT