Key ideas 

• Happy people are neither afraid nor hopeful. They simply use reason to deal with what is in front of them. 
• Their life is stable and dependent on their judgment. They are not carried away by sensual pleasures. 
• Indulgent pleasures are short-lived and therefore worthless. 
• A happy person is satisfied and on friendly terms with their present circumstances, whatever they may be 

A happy person neither hopes nor fears 

I have been defining a happy person, without being strict about definitions. Happy is a person who uses reason, and he neither hopes nor fears. But [you may object that] rocks also feel neither fear or sadness; neither do cattle. Yet no one would call them happy, because they cannot understand what happiness is. You can add to the list people who are dull. Their lack of self-knowledge reduces them to the level of cattle, mere animals. There is no difference between them because the latter have no reason and the former has only a corrupt form of it, crooked and cunning. It only hurts them. 

You cannot be considered happy if you are not influenced by what is true. Therefore, a happy life is stable, and it is based on true and dependable judgment. The mind is unpolluted and free from all evils only when it can: 

• escape not only from wounds but even from mere scratches; 
• hold on to the position it has taken; and 
• defend it even against the all misfortunes. 

A happy person is not carried away by sensual pleasures 

Sensual pleasure can surround us on every side, use every means of attack, win over the mind with caresses, and put on trial our every strategy so it can attract us fully or partly. Yet which human being who retains any trace of humanity would wish to be tricked day and night, neglect their mind, and devote themselves to bodily pleasures? 

Be content with the present 

Our challenger says 

But the mind also has pleasure of its own. 

Let it have them then. Let it judge luxury and pleasures. Let it indulge itself to the full in all matters of sensual delights. Then let it look back upon what it enjoyed before. With all those faded sensual pleasures fresh in its memory, let it rejoice and eagerly look forward to those other pleasures it experienced a long time ago and hopes to experience again. While the body lies helplessly satiated in the present, let it send out its thoughts to the future. Let it consider what it hopes for. 

All this will make it appear even more worthless, in my opinion. It is insanity to choose evil over good. Now, no insane person can be happy, and no one can be sane if they think what is harmful is the highest good and strives to get it. 

A happy person, therefore, is one who can make the right judgment in all things: happy with one’s present circumstances, whatever they may be, satisfied and on friendly terms with the conditions of life. That person is happy whose reason guides all their activities. 

Think about this 

You cannot be considered happy if you are not influenced by what is true. Therefore, a happy life is stable, and it is based on true and dependable judgment. 

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In the FIFTH and the SIXTH chapter of his discourse ON THE HAPPY LIFE, Seneca tells us that both hope and fear make us unfree. This is an excerpt from Stoic Happiness, a plain English version of Seneca’s On the Happy Life, published by The Stoic Gym. https://amzn.to/2I0mbVW

 

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