Tao Of Seneca Letter 18 - On Festivals And Fasting

► Tao Of Seneca Letter 18 - On Festivals And Fasting ◄

It is the month of December, and yet the city is at this very
moment in a sweat. License is given to the general merrymaking.
Everything resounds with mighty preparations—as if the Saturnalia
differed at all from the usual business day! So true it is that
the difference is nil, that I regard as correct the remark of the
man who said: “Once December was a month; now it is a year.”

If I had you with me, I should be glad to consult you and find
out what you think should be done—whether we ought to make
no change in our daily routine, or whether, in order not to be
out of sympathy with the ways of the public, we should dine in
gayer fashion and doff the toga. As it is now, we Romans have
changed our dress for the sake of pleasure and holiday-making,
though in former times that was only customary when the State
was disturbed and had fallen on evil days.

I am sure that, if I know you aright, playing the part of an
umpire you would have wished that we should be neither like the
liberty-capped throng in all ways, nor in all ways unlike them;
unless, perhaps, this is just the season when we ought to lay down
the law to the soul, and bid it be alone in refraining from pleasures
Moral Letters to Lucilius just when the whole mob has let itself go in pleasures; for this is the surest proof which a man can get of his own constancy, if he neither seeks the things which are seductive and allure him to
luxury, nor is led into them.

It shows much more courage to remain dry and sober when
the mob is drunk and vomiting; but it shows greater self-control
to refuse to withdraw oneself and to do what the crowd does, but
in a different way—thus neither making oneself conspicuous nor
becoming one of the crowd. For one may keep holiday without
extravagance.

I am so firmly determined, however, to test the constancy of
your mind that, drawing from the teachings of great men, I shall
give you also a lesson: Set aside a certain number of days, during
which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare,
with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this
the condition that I feared?”

It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul
should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress,
and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against
her violence. In days of peace the soldier performs manoeuvres,
throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself
by gratuitous toil, in order that he may be equal to unavoidable
toil. If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes,
train him before it comes. Such is the course which those men
have followed who, in their imitation of poverty, have every
month come almost to want, that they might never recoil from
what they had so often rehearsed."

In this video, I'm going to talk about letter 18 and how festival and fasting relates to our commemorative dates in the society we live today.

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