Making peace with what was
On the axis: Scope of action · the past
The past is what is no longer up to us par excellence: should we accept it fully, even to the point of willing that it was, or stay its prisoner through regret?
Justification
Misfortune comes not from things but from our grip on them: only what we wrongly count as ours can be torn away. From this Seneca draws the : to count as one's own only one's judgements and desires, surrendering fortune to the chance that gives and reclaims it. Less a speculative thesis than a practical directive, it makes invulnerable by shrinking the surface he offers to blows: what he carries within, no fortune can reach.
The wise man loses nothing through any loss, for he carries all his goods within himself.On the Constancy of the Wise Man, V
Letters to Lucilius, IX (the wise man is self-sufficient) · On the Constancy of the Wise Man, V-VI
Justification
Since fate will come to pass regardless, the one thing in our power is to walk with it or be dragged behind it: the same course of things leads us, but our assent decides whether it is a yoke or freedom. Seneca thus pushes Stoicism past mere resignation: not to endure what happens but to will it, because has ordered it for the good of the whole. This turns necessity into an object of desire, and the second grief, that of struggling against the inevitable, is the only one we can spare ourselves.
Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.Letters to Lucilius, CVII
Letters to Lucilius, CVII (ducunt volentem fata, quoting Cleanthes) · On the Happy Life, XV (to obey God is freedom)
Anchors: Seneca
leads to: Relation to the past