LIFE

A Seneca Quote on True Happiness

Is happiness the goal in life? Or is the goal in life to be able to live a good life where we can cultivate our interests and unfold our creativity alone and with others?

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so, wants nothing.”

Seneca

Seneca’s quote is about what the Stoics were very concerned about, namely what is a good life, what is happiness? The Stoics were concerned that we must focus on what we can control: ourselves, our actions and our judgments.

The Stoics believed that we must let go of the rest, because we can not have a happy and good life if we constantly think about what we do not have and what we can not get; the unattainable.

Positive thinking can mean everything for a good life and for a good quality of life.

In our time and our part of the world, it may seem that the search for happiness is very important in people’s consciousness. At the same time as material prosperity has increased, it may also appear that the general dissatisfaction in some parts of the population is increasing. This is reflected in many areas, including the increasing amount of hate speech in the public debate, in social media and in the comment fields in online news media. One phenomenon that also gives cause for concern is the increased threat to conspiracy theories.

Seneca’s quote about true happiness can here be a useful reminder that we should focus on ourselves where we are here and now, that is to say in the present, where we are right now.

We should not focus too much on what the future may bring. The point is that if we manage to take our eyes off the future and thus manage to have less focus on hope or fear for the future, and if we manage to be more satisfied with what we have, then the road to experiencing happiness becomes much shorter.

An example of taking the focus away from enjoying the time here and now is investing in the hope of uncertain winnings in the future by gambling on the hope of winning lots of money. Millions of people spend large sums of money every week, and this is almost always lost money because they spend their money on something they have no control over. For many, it more or less ends up with them losing control and having a poorer quality of life. For some, this in turn leads to deterioration or even loss of close relationships. Gambling gives players hope of winning, but everyone knows that the big win is almost always absent and that few get richer and happier from gambling.

Let’s repeat Seneca’s words:

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so, wants nothing.”

Seneca’s quote about true happiness tells me something important about the attitude to life and the situation I live my life in:

I must try to think that what I have is what I have.

It’s about accepting where I am, my place in life and in the world. When I think like this, I can give up hope and dreams of experiencing miracles that would make life something completely different than what it is now.

I would probably believe that such an accepting and layback way of living life as Seneca recommends, is both natural and normal for a slightly older person.

Younger people, on the other hand, will be more characterized by impatience, dreams and longing for something new and nice — which they unfortunately do not have control over, but can only hope for. They therefore risk being disappointed.

Man can avoid being disappointed by embracing the stoic mantra:

Focus on what you can control. Let go of the rest.

Øivind H. Solheim writes fiction, essays and articles aiming to help others understanding life, other humans and themselves. He has published five novels, two non-fiction books and a poetry book.

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