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It’s in this leisure, Ovid observed, that “we reveal what kind of people we are.”
We must be disciplined about our discipline and moderate in our moderation.
Won’t my work suffer if I step away from it? Seneca pointed out how readily we take risks with uncertain payoffs in our career—but we’re afraid to risk even one minute of time for leisure.
Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell. —JOHN MILTON
Despair and restlessness go together. The problem is that you can’t flee despair. You can’t escape, with your body, problems that exist in your mind and soul. You can’t run away from your choices—you can only fix them with better choices.
When you defer and delay, interest is accumulating. The bill still comes due . . . and it will be even harder to afford then than it will be right now. The one thing you can’t escape in your life is yourself.
Those who think they will find solutions to all their problems by traveling far from home, perhaps as they stare at the Colosseum or some enormous moss-covered statue of Buddha, Emerson said, are bringing ruins to ruins. Wherever they go, whatever they do, their sad self comes along.
In the fourth century BC, Mengzi spoke of how the Way is near, but people seek it in what is distant.
Marcus Aurelius pointed out that we don’t need to “get away from it all.” We just need to look within. “Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions,” he said, “than your own soul.”
It is worth comparing the agony and torture of Clamence with a more recent example from another French philosopher, Anne Dufourmantelle, who died in 2017, aged fifty-three, rushing into the surf to save two drowning children who were not her own. In her writing, Anne had spoken often of risk—saying that it was impossible to live life without risk and that in fact, life is risk. It is in the presence of danger, she once said in an interview, that we are gifted with the “strong incentive for action, dedication, and surpassing oneself.”
Neither the Buddhists nor the Stoics believed in what has come to be called “original sin”—that we are a fallen and flawed and broken species. On the contrary, they believe we were born good. To them, the phrase “Be natural” was the same as “Do the right thing.” For Aristotle, virtue wasn’t just something contained in the soul—it was how we lived. It was what we did. He called it eudaimonia: human flourishing.
A person who makes selfish choices or acts contrary to their conscience will never be at peace. A person who sits back while others suffer or struggle will never feel good, or feel that they are enough, no matter how much they accomplish or how impressive their reputation may be.
As a well-spent day brings a happy sleep, so a well-employed life brings a happy death. —LEONARDO DA VINCI
It was Cicero who said that to study philosophy is to learn how to die.
