Seneca to Lucilius: 52, on choosing our teachers

We all need teachers, mentors, or role models. Nobody is self-made, despite the pernicious and persistent American myth that argues otherwise. But how do we choose our mentors? How do we recognize if they are not actually good for us? Not everyone is lucky enough to hang around obvious choices, such as Socrates.

The topic of selecting our teachers is both important and, when treated by Seneca, a bit ironic, for reasons that will appear clear in a moment. In his fifty-second letter to his friend Lucilius, Seneca writes:

“So with people’s dispositions; some are pliable and easy to manage, but others have to be laboriously wrought out by hand, so to speak, and are wholly employed in the making of their own foundations. I should accordingly deem more fortunate those who have never had any trouble with themselves; but the others, I feel, have deserved better of themselves, who have won a victory over the meanness of their own nature, and have not gently led, but have wrestled their way to wisdom.” (Letter LII.6)