Hardship and Happiness (Ad Marciam De consolatione, Ad Helviam matrem De consolatione, De Consolatione ad Polybium, De Brevitate Vitæ, De Constantia Sapientis, De Tranquillitate Animi, De Otio, De Vita Beata, De Providentia)

by Seneca

You23 must realize that you stand exposed to every kind of blow, and that the weapons that have struck others have been whizzing past you. Just as if, with poor equipment, you were climbing up to attack some city wall or a high point occupied by a large enemy force, you should expect to be wounded, and should reckon that your body is the target of the rocks that are raining down, and of the arrows and the spears. Whenever someone falls beside you or behind you, cry out: “You will not deceive me, fortune, or find me complacent or heedless when you destroy me. I know what you are up to: you struck somebody else, but you were aiming at me.” (4) Who has ever examined his life in the recognition that he is going to die? Which of you has ever ventured to think about exile, poverty, grief? Who would not, if he were advised to think about them, spit out the advice like words of ill omen, and bid the curse fall on his enemies, or on the unwelcome adviser himself? (5) “I didn’t think it would happen.” How can you think that anything is not going to happen when you know that it can happen, and you see that it has happened to many people? What a fine line of poetry this is, deserving better than to have come from the stage: “What can happen to one person can happen to anyone”!24

Yes