Tranquility of the Mind
Introduction
It’s 4 AM in the morning and I can’t sleep. I find myself burden by some troubling thoughts. The death of people I care about to, the paranoia of disloyalty, and the lustful nature of men. These things plague my mind and I don’t have peace. What I do have is a 2 $ collection of Seneca the Younger work.
The piece I am going to write about is Tranquility of the Mind. In this essay, Seneca gives advice to Serenus on how vices prevent us from achieving happiness. Which means peace for me. As I read each chapter, I will try my best to put it in my own words and highlight the important words.
Chapter I
This first part is Serenus’ leter to Seneca. While feeling “ok,” Serenus is not feeling great. He is too aware of his surface vices and evil, but he is not aware enough to know them all.
Serenus’ deep yearning for virtues and tranquility leads him to say this:
“It is no use for you to tell me that all virtues are weakly at the outset, and that they acquire strength and solidity by time, for I am well aware.”
This relates to me on a deep level. Sometimes, I understand that things need to be work on, but I feel a deep fear in my heart that I am not strong enough.
Furthermore, Serenus understands that he is not greedy like many men, but he is still envious of material goods. Deep down, he knows that “none of these things alter my [his] principles, yet all of them disturb [him].”
For me, it is not material wealth that causes this feeling. Instead, it’s lust that disturbs me. Many of my peers are rushing to lose their virginity to lust. Deep down, I want to pursuit love, and not give to lust. Yet, I am still lustful, but I just know not to act it out.
After that, Serenus reflects on how he desires to help other. Yet, his mind is not use to receive shocks. These shocks lead Serenus to run away from his promises and responsibilities. In our word, Serenus has anxiety because he thinks he is not good enough.
Reflecting upon this, I find myself to plague by another form of anxiety. I am so so afraid of being vulnerable to others, I can articulate my feelings to others besides anger. It leads to run away from many situations.
Next up, Serenus talks about honesty and pretension. In his mind, pretension comes from the need to be remember after death. He finds the honest man to “let one’s speech, simply follow and whither they lead.”
While Serenus talks about honesty and pretension, I am going to take a more specific case of how to be honest. Is being totally honest a good thing, or there are time and place for honesty? I don’t know.
Finally, Serenus talks about human’s arrogance. He observes that man’s thinking that he is virtuous leads him to not be, and he is afraid that he might not have enough self awareness to know. That’s why he is asking Seneca to point out his illnesses and “to deem [him] worthy to owe [his] peace of mind.”
Like Serenus I simply ask, “take from me, then, this evil, whatever it may be, and help one who is in distress within the sight of land.”
Chapter II
The second part is the beginning of Seneca’s response to Serenus. To start off, Seneca assures that the worst is over. Serenus’ unease is only because he is not accustomed to “healthiness.” Therefore, he should have confidence in himself and not stray from the right practices.
On tranquility of the mind, Seneca noted:
“What you desire, to be undisturbed, is a great thing, nay, the greatest thing of all, and one which raises a man almost to level of a god.”
Isn’t that something we all desire? The knowledge that we are on the right path to our pursuits. Isn’t this what self-help gurus want for us? The peace of mind on the journeys in life. In Seneca’s word:
“What we are seeking, then, is how the mind may always pursue a steady, unruffled course, maybe pleased with itself, and look with pleasure upon its surroundings, and experience no interruption of this job, but abide in peaceful condition without being ever either elated or depressed: this will be “peace of mind.”
In order to attain a virtue, Seneca proposes that we have to own it to ourself and recognize the flaws. In doing so, we gain perspective on how flaw we are, understand that there are patients with more terminal conditions, and gain some space for us to breath.
Then, he went on to identify these vices: men who overcome with pride; indecisive men who never find their callings; men who are desperate which makes them regretful not because what they haven’t done, but by what they’ve done. Seneca then emphasizes that all these are symptoms of dissatisfaction with oneself.
Slowly, these conditions turn poisonous. Choked out by their own poisons, these people loathe their idleness and start to blame others. They look at others’ successes with bitter jealousy which ends up compounding their negativities. Ultimately, the poison kills their mind from the inside out.
I’ve seen this poison kills in my life in the form of my grandmother. As an ambitious woman in a repressed society, she found that helping other is the way out. Yet, her intentions for helping others are not clear which cause these people to abandon her. It’s a never ending cycle for her, she can’t help it. Now, she finds herself lock up in her own mind resenting every wrong done on her — while trying to salvage peace through religion and scripture.
Seneca then goes on to examine people like me — the ones who find pleasure in pain. These people tend to wear themselves out with busy action to ease an itch in their bones. These people tend to seek out troubles to satisfy their pleasures. The flaw in these people is that they are never happy with the present, they always anticipate and look forward to the next things, thus never enjoy the moment. Somehow, these people never realize that it is not the place that makes them unhappy, it is themselves that make them unhappy.
That’s a hard pill to swallow knowing that somehow, my mind is not wired to always take in everything in the moment. My question is how to balance the two anticipation and enjoying the moment in order to not burn out?
Read “Tranquility of the Mind” on a larger screen, or in the Medium app!
