When Good Intentions Go Wrong — Letters from a Stoic

The prayers your parents said for you may have been curses in disguise. Letter 60 is one of Seneca's shortest and sharpest. He opens with a formal complaint: he is filing suit against all the well-intentioned wishes that were made on his behalf when he was young. Riches. Prominence.

Power. All the things loving people pray for on behalf of those they love. All of them hostile, he says, in proportion as they are more completely fulfilled. The letter expands into an image of human consumption: ships from every sea converging to supply a single meal, grain gathered from distant places to fill city markets, vast machinery assembled so that one person can eat.

The bull is satisfied with a few acres. One forest feeds a herd of elephants. Man alone outstrips every creature in appetite, not because nature made him that way, but because his solicitous cravings did. The letter closes with a distinction that stings: he really lives who is made use of by many; he really lives who makes use of himself.

The man who has sealed himself off and grown torpid is no better off than if he were already in his tomb. You can inscribe his name on the lintel before he's gone.