Nature as Our Best Provider — Letters from a Stoic

He has found something, and he is ready to share it, the shortest route to the greatest riches. Letter 119 opens with that playful offer before naming the actual creditor you must borrow from: yourself. The principle: it does not matter whether you crave nothing or whether you possess something, as long as you are free from worry. What matters is the disposition, not the quantity.

The letter then distinguishes carefully between what nature demands and what luxury demands. Nature is insistent but modest: she wants hunger satisfied, not entertained; thirst quenched, not performed. Luxury requires things that can only be assembled at the cost of wretchedness and anxiety.

He works through the catalogue: wine, food, clothing, housing, each thing that nature needs is ready at hand; each excess requires effort, anxiety, and often the subordination of other people. The Builder of the universe arranged things so that we could exist in well-being. He did not arrange them for luxury.

Everything we want because of sheer necessity we can accept without squeamishness. That unsqueamishness, that capacity to be content with what suffices, is one of nature's best gifts.