Member-only story
Seneca and Gratitude
Stoicism and Christianity Meet in Beneficent Intent
The Winter Solstice is coming, a time of spiritual significance for many people, and, of course, the days of Yuletide are capped off by the second most important (and most celebrated) date in the Western Christian calendar — Christmas. It’s a time when people’s feelings diverge — for most people it’s a time of feeling gratitude, for others it’s a lonely time, a reminder of loss.
Luck plays a role in our lives that our egos naturally struggle to acknowledge or even recognise. I can’t emphasize this enough — when you are born you’re a roll of the cosmic dice. If you’re drinking clean water you did well, if you have a home with heating and electricity, a huge stack of chips has been pushed your way across the table. It really is that simple.
Those of us who can ought to show gratitude, because we are rich only for as long as we have gratitude. To paraphrase Seneca, it is not those who have little, but those who crave more that feel poor.
Gratitude can take two forms, it can be “practiced” from time to time as a reminder to yourself of your good fortune, or it can be lived. The former is a sham. Gratitude in the sense of a self-help “practice” is a really a consolation — making ourselves feel better by focusing on what we’ve got. Considered in this…