I have written you a great many letters.1 You tell me now that you have them all, and you would like to know what the heap amounts to — whether there is an argument underneath a hundred-odd occasions of me telling you about a falling-down villa, a bad afternoon at the games, a man who died between dinner and daybreak.
There is one. I will lay it out here without the scaffolding, and afterwards we can take each part of it slowly.
You Ask What They Add Up To
But first, so that you know what sort of man is talking.
I am not writing to you from the far shore. I am not a wise man, and I do not expect to become one. We are patients in the same ward, and I happen to be the one who is talking about the illness. When I tell you what to do, I am also telling myself, and I fail at it frequently.
Distrust any teacher who pretends otherwise. A seasick pilot is no use to you in a storm.
Nothing Is Ours Except Time
Begin here, because everything else comes out of it.
Set yourself free, for your own sake. Gather up your time. Some of it has been taken from you by force, some quietly removed, and some has simply slid out of your hands while you were looking elsewhere — and that last kind is the disgraceful kind, because nobody took it. You put it down.
Look honestly at where the hours go, and you will find that the largest part of a life is spent doing badly, a good share doing nothing at all, and the whole of it doing what is beside the point.
So who do you know who puts a value on his time? Who reckons up what a day is worth? Who understands that he is dying daily?
Because we make an error about death. We look forward to it, as though it were waiting somewhere up ahead. Most of it has already happened. Every year behind you is in death's keeping now.
Nothing is ours except time. Nature gave us the ownership of this one thing, and it is so slippery that anyone who wants it can take it off us. And notice how we behave about it. Cheap things, replaceable things, a man counts carefully and knows he owes for. Hand him a portion of your time — the one loan that even a grateful man can never repay —,
and he feels no debt at all.
You may want to know how I am managing this, since I preach it so freely. My accounts balance about as you would expect from a man who is generous but careful. I cannot claim I waste nothing. I can tell you exactly what I am wasting, and how, and why. Which is more than most can.
Everywhere Means Nowhere
You read constantly, and you read widely, and I want to warn you about it.
A well-ordered mind can stay in one place and keep its own company. Restlessness is the symptom of a disordered one, and it shows up in a man's reading before it shows up anywhere else.
Stay with a few great minds and digest them. Everywhere means nowhere. A man who spends his life traveling ends up with a great many acquaintances and no friends; the man who dips into every author and settles with none ends up the same way. Food does you no good if it leaves the stomach as soon as it arrives. No wound heals if you try a different salve every day.
A plant that is constantly moved never takes root.
You cannot read all the books you own, so own only as many as you can read. And each day, out of everything you have run past, take one thought and chew it until it is yours. That is my own practice. One thing a day, kept.
Today's, since I owe you something for the letter, is from Epicurus. Yes, Epicurus — I cross into the enemy's camp regularly, not as a deserter but as a scout. He says contented poverty is an honorable estate. Though if it is contented, it is not poverty at all. The poor man is not the one who has little.
He is the one who wants more.
And if anyone objects that I am handling another school's property, tell them that any truth I find is my own property. People who swear by a name rather than by a sentence have understood nothing. The good ideas are common land.
Withdraw, but Not Into a Sulk
You ask what to avoid above all. Crowds — and I say that as a man who cannot yet manage them either. I never bring home the character I took out. Nobody is neutral: every person you spend time with makes some vice attractive, or stamps it onto you, or infects you without either of you noticing. And the larger the mob, the worse the exposure.
But copying the crowd because it is large, and hating the crowd because it is unlike you, are the same mistake in different clothes. Withdraw into yourself as far as you can. Keep company with people who will make you better, and with people you can make better.
It runs both ways. A man learns while he teaches.
And do not go looking for an audience. You may ask what all the study was for, if so few can follow it. Someone was asked that, and answered: I am content with few. Content with one. Content with none at all.
Turn your good qualities inward.
Look at the Man Serving You
I hear from people coming from your house that you live on friendly terms with the people you own. Good, and I want you to understand why it matters more than your friends think.
They are slaves, people say. No. They are men. Slaves — no, companions. Slaves — no, our fellow slaves, if you stop and consider that Fortune has exactly the same rights over free men as over them.
The man you call your slave was born of the same stock, breathes under the same sky, lives on the same terms and dies on them. Rate him by his character, not by his work. A man makes his own character; his duties are handed to him by accident.
It is foolish to buy a horse and inspect only the saddle; it is twice as foolish to price a man by his clothing.
And then turn it around. He is a slave, you say. Show me anyone who is not. One man is a slave to appetite, another to money, another to ambition, and every last one of us to fear. I can point you to an ex-consul who takes his orders from an old woman and boys of the best families in Rome in bondage to actors.
There is no servitude more disgraceful than the kind you put on yourself.
Rehearse the Ending
Now the thing all these letters have been circling.
I am old. I went out to my country house and the building is falling down, and the bailiff swore it was not neglect; the house was simply old — and I built that house. The trees are bare and gnarled, and it is not neglect; they are simply old — and I planted those trees. There was a broken-down creature at the door, and I asked whose dead man this was that we were keeping for burial, and he said: Sir, don't you know me? I am Felicio; you used to bring me toys. His teeth are falling out. So are mine.
Love your old age. It is full of pleasure if you know how to use it. Fruit is best just before it goes. Youth is most charming at its close. And there is a real pleasure in having worn your appetites out and being done with them.
Yes, you will say, but it is a nuisance to have death in front of your face. Death should be in front of everyone's face. We are not called up in order of seniority.
Here is the practice. A day contains every element the longest life contains — light, then darkness, then it is over. So run every day as though it closed the series. There was a man in Syria who held his own funeral every evening, wine and the funeral dinner, and had himself carried out of the room while singers chanted he has lived his life, he has lived his life. He did it from a rotten motive. Do the same thing from a good one. Go to sleep saying: I have lived. Then if God adds another day, take it as a bonus.
Think on death, Epicurus says, and you may object that there is no point studying a text you can use only once. That is exactly why you must keep at it. When you can never test whether you have learned a thing, you must never stop learning it.
And when he says think on death, he means think on freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. What can a prison do to him? His way out is open. There is one chain that holds us here, and it is love of life.
You may not be able to cut it but you can wear it thin.
Grief, and What It Is Really For
Your friend Flaccus is dead, and I am sorry. I will not tell you not to mourn — I would hardly dare, though it is the better way. Let your eyes not be dry, and let them not overflow. We may weep. We must not wail.
There is self-regard tangled up in grief. We go looking in our own tears for proof that we have lost something. Nobody mourns purely for the person they lost.
But here is the part I want you to keep. My friends who are gone are sweet to me and not bitter, and the reason is this: while I had them, I had them as a man who knew he would one day lose them. And having lost them, I have them still.
What the Whole Thing Comes To
Guard your time. Read few things deeply. Stay out of crowds until you can survive one. Look at the man serving you and see a man, then look at yourself and find the master you are already obeying. Learn what is enough by practicing going without it. Rehearse the ending nightly, so that when it arrives you are not surprised into cowardice.
And do not mistake any of this for a subject. Philosophy is not a trick to catch the public, and it is not devised for show. It is a matter of facts, not of words. It molds the soul, orders the life, sits at the helm and steers while we waver. Prove your words by your deeds. A man should be the same under all conditions and always himself.
The point is not how long you live. It is how well.
I have not managed all of it. I will leave it to death to say how far I got.
Farewell.