Saturday, October 30, 2021

Letters from a Stoic 119 - On Nature as our Best Provider

On Nature as our Best Provider

The theme of this letter is: enough; Nature provides with with enough.  People, though, introduce excess.

Seneca writes variations on this them.

it does not matter whether you crave nothing, or whether you possess something. The important principle in either case is the same – freedom from worry.

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If I am hungry, I must eat. Nature does not care whether the bread is the coarse kind or the finest wheat; she does not desire the stomach to be entertained, but to be filled.

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Look to the end, in all matters, and then you will cast away superfluous things. Hunger calls me; let me stretch forth my hand to that which is nearest; my very hunger has made attractive in my eyes whatever I can grasp. A starving man despises nothing.

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The wise man is the keenest seeker for the riches of nature.

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Would you rather have much, or enough? He who has much desires more – a proof that he has not yet acquired enough; but he who has enough has attained that which never fell to the rich man's lot – a stopping-point.

Lack of contentment is a vice.  It leads to gluttony, luxury and decadence and leads further to others' resentment.

Enough is never too little, and not-enough is never too much.

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But that which is enough for nature, is not enough for man.  There have been found persons who crave something more after obtaining everything

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He ... who has arranged his affairs according to nature's demands, is free from the fear, as well as from the sensation, of poverty.

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Wealth ... blinds and attracts the mob.

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measure all things by the demands of Nature; for these demands can be satisfied

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The Builder of the universe, who laid down for us the laws of life, provided that we should exist in well-being, but not in luxury. Everything conducive to our well-being is prepared and ready to our hands; but what luxury requires can never be got together except with wretchedness and anxiety.

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whatever we want because of sheer necessity we accept without squeamishness.

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