Seneca,

The section of your letter which resonates with me the most today, is the observation that “conversion” (for lack of a better term) to a philosophical life is a promotion.

I think you are 100% correct that we do not fully understand our need for progress, or even the path there.  If we did, we’d throw ourselves into it with reckless abandon.  We’d leave everything of the common world behind (so far as we needed to do), and embrace the rigors of the school.

But we don’t.

Thank you for the letter; farewell.

Part of Michel Daw’s Reading Plan of Seneca’s Letters.