This is the second chapter of Seneca’s discourse, On Tranquility. In this exchange with his young protege Serenus, Seneca expands on the following key ideas

1. Tranquility is the greatest thing. We will discuss how to have a steady mind. But before then, we should understand the mental disease.
2. Things like a grand declaration of one’s intention without following it through, indecision, restlessness, and lethargic living result in our dislike of effort as well as in our dislike of leisure.
3. We become restless. We try to amuse ourselves with travel, trying to escape from ourselves

A recovered patient can still feel the symptoms

SENECA: My friend Serenus, I have been silently asking myself this for a long time. What should I compare your state of mind to? It resembles most closely the condition of those who have recovered from a long and serious illness but continue to experience slight touches and twinges occasionally. Although they have passed through the final stages of the disease, they doubt if it has actually left them.

Even though they are in perfect health, they still want to be examined by the physician; whenever they feel warm, they feel that the fever is coming back.

These people, Serenus, are not unhealthy, but they are not used to being well. Even a quiet sea will show a ripple or two when calming down after a storm.

Therefore, you don’t need any of those harsher remedies that we have already passed over: checking yourself, getting angry with yourself, severely driving yourself.

Rather you should take the last one on the list: having confidence in yourself and believing that you are on the right path, without being sidetracked by the many footprints of wanderers that cross in every direction, some of them even circling the right path itself.

Tranquility is the greatest of all

What you desire is to be unshaken. It is a great thing. No, it is the greatest thing of all. It raises a human being almost to the level of a god.

The Greeks call this mental composure euthymia, on which Democritus has written a distinguished treatise. I call this tranquility. It is not necessary to reproduce the Greek expression. What we need is a term that has the force of the Greek word, not its form.

How to have a steady mind

What we are seeking, then, is how the mind may always

• follow a steady, unobstructed course;
• be happy with itself;
• look with pleasure upon its surroundings;
• uninterrupted in its joy; but,
• rest in this peaceful condition without ever being unduly elated or depressed. 

This will be tranquility.

Let’s consider in general how we may attain this. Then it will be for you to choose whatever applies to your own case.

The disease and its description

But first, we must drag the entire weakness into plain view, so everyone can recognize what applies to them. At the same time, you will understand how much less you suffer by your selfcriticism compared to those who have made some grand declaration. They are bound by it and are struggling under its weight.

• They keep up their pretense because of a sense of shame rather than any desire.
• This is also true of those who suffer from indecision and continual changing of purpose, who take pleasure in what they have given up, and those who yawn and idle away their time.
• Some twist and turn like bad sleepers, settling first in one way, then in another, until they go to sleep out of weariness. They often end up in a state they are found in, not because they dislike change but by old age that is reluctant to begin any change.
• Some are not fickle but continue to live their lives the way they have been living due to their laziness. They don’t live the life of their choice but the life they have begun to live.

This disease has several symptoms but one effect: making people dissatisfied with themselves. This arises from mental imbalance and desires that one  is afraid to express or unable to fulfill; when one either dares not attempt as much as they wish to do or fails in their efforts and depends entirely upon hope. Such people are always fickle and changeable, which is the inevitable result of living in a suspended state.

No matter what path they take to achieve their end and teach and force themselves to use dishonourable and difficult things when their efforts bring no reward, they are tormented by the disgrace of failure. They do not regret their wrong ambition, but only that they failed. They then begin to feel sorry for what they have done and afraid to begin again. Their mind slowly falls into endless agitation because they can neither command nor obey their desires. Because of their hesitancy, their life cannot develop properly. Their mind becomes sluggish as it becomes dazed by disappointments.

Dislike of effort

All these symptoms become aggravated when their dislike of effort drives them to idleness and secret studies. They are unendurable to a mind eager to take on a public career. It wants action and is restless because it finds too few resources within itself. Therefore, when it loses the amusement which business affords to active people, it cannot endure home, loneliness, or the walls of a room. It regards itself with dislike when left to itself. This is the cause of boredom and dissatisfaction.

The mind that can go nowhere tosses and turns. It cannot rest anywhere. It endures the leisure forced upon it unhappily and unwillingly. When one feels ashamed to confess the real cause of one's suffering, and when diffidence drives the suffering inward, the desires are confined in a narrow space, and there is no escape. This causes melancholy and grief, and a thousand fluctuations of the uncertain mind. The mind is held in suspense by unfulfilled hopes and is saddened by dashed hopes.

Dislike of leisure

This creates a state of mind that makes people loathe their leisure and complain that they have nothing to do. It makes them view the progress of others with the bitterest jealousy. Their unhappy inactivity encourages envy. Those who cannot succeed themselves wish everyone else to be ruined. This dislike of others’ progress and despair of their own produces a mind angry against Fortune, complaining about the times, withdrawing into corners, brooding over its misery, until it becomes sick and tired of itself.

The human mind is naturally active and apt to move. It delights in every opportunity for excitement and diversion. People with worse natures find greater delight in wearing themselves out with busy activity. It is like sores yearning for hands that will harm them, delighting in their touch. A foul itch takes delight in whatever scratches it.

Similarly, I assure you, that these minds over which desires have spread like nasty ulcers, take pleasure in toils and troubles. Certain things please the body as well as give it a certain amount of pain, such as turning oneself over and changing sides before it is tired or cooling oneself by moving into another position. Homer's Achilles was like this: lying first upon his face, then upon his back, placing himself in various positions. Like all sick people, he could not tolerate any position for long but used changing positions as remedies.

Aimless wandering trying to escape oneself

People wander aimlessly, travel to distant places, sometimes by sea, sometimes by land. They try to reduce the pain of aimlessness that is always dissatisfied with the present.

• Let us go to Campania [a lush region]. Now I am sick of a life of luxury.
• Let us see the wild country. Let us explore the passes of Bruttii and Lucania. But in this wilderness, some beauty is missing, something that will bring relief to our pampered eyes from the neverending