💀 Dying Every Day
The Dying Every Day series delivers guided meditations on the art of living. Each meditation provides a quote, a selected passage (from an original Stoic text), and a reflection prompt to consider. These meditations are designed to help you (and me) reflect on what it means to live a good life.
Listen to this week’s meditation on In Search of Wisdom:
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The Art of Having Enough
“He who has more than enough and yet hungers for still more will find no remedy in gold or silver or horses and sheep and cattle but in casting out the source of mischief and being purged. For his ailment is not poverty but insatiability… he will never cease to need superfluities — that is, to want what he does not need.” — Plutarch, On Love of Wealth
Selected Passage
In this week’s meditation, we explore the art of living through a selected reading from the letters of Seneca.
Suppose you regard wealth as a good. Poverty will distress you, and, worst of all, it will be an imaginary poverty. However much you may have, still, because someone has more, you will feel that you fall short to the extent he is ahead. You consider official position a good: this man being made a consul will vex you, or that one’s being reappointed, and you will be envious whenever you see another’s name appearing frequently on the list of officeholders. Such is the madness of ambition that you will feel you have come in last if anyone is ahead of you.
+ Adapted from On Care of Health and Peace of Mind
Contemplation Exercise
Consider reflecting or journaling about what it means to have enough. Philosophical and spiritual traditions, as well as modern research, suggest that we tend to desire what doesn’t actually bring us happiness. You’ve probably heard of terms like the “hedonic treadmill” (read Dan Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness) or “status games” (read Will Storr’s book The Status Game). Interestingly, when we know we have enough (and believe we are enough), life becomes much less about ourselves.
Reflection Questions:
(1) How might your life change if you believed you had everything you needed to live a good life?
(2) How would “having enough” change how you see yourself, others, and the world around you?
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W.
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