I have been reading through Seneca's Letters from a Stoic. You can find an ebook version here.
After every letter, I find myself having many thoughts that I would like to write down, call them meditations, perhaps. In letter VIII, Seneca says something that others have already said, yet he finds it worth repeating. "Avoid whatever pleases the throng: avoid the gifts of Chance!" He goes on to say that whatever is given can just as easily be taken away. This is a simple refrain that we were also likely told in Sunday school or merely in passing by a teacher, sometimes as a threat and sometimes as a caution. The gifts of Fortune, Seneca says, are a snare. Be wary of that which you happen upon by chance.
But why should we avoid such things? My own thoughts on the matter agree with the letter directly after this one, in letter IX, he says that when you are attacked and all things are taken from you, that you should still be happy because the goods that you possess are that which lie within you, not the physical goods within your reach. This makes me think about my current situation. I live in a cabin/house in the middle of the prairie of Indiana, using solar for my power and rain for my water. All that I once had - a house in the city with 2 cars and a wife and all sorts of gadgets and things - is passed and gone. But I did not truly have any of those things, they were not my goods. Those things were happenstance of Fate, of Fortune, of Chance. They were preferred indifferents, but not mine. Fortune gave me those things for a time and then took them away, and all is well.
Just the mere word, happiness is linked to Fate and Fortune. Hap- is Luck. Luck is connected to the whims of Fate. So if you are happy, you might say that you are lucky, however, the Stoic divorces happiness from the whims of Fate. The Stoic seeks internal contentedness, assenting to that which is virtuous. Virtue is all that matters, therefore, so Happiness, Luck, depends on Virtue. The Stoic frames his happiness within the bounds of his virtue, so that the goods that he possesses are of no more importance to his happiness as anything else. To draw happiness from the television he owns or the computer or the car or the house or even the wife that he says is his is folly. Happiness can only be drawn from virtue, and virtue is within the control of the Stoic. Therefore, Seneca tells us to avoid the gifts of Fortune, and he means to avoid investing in the gifts of Fortune as if they could provide any amount of happiness or joy. If you find joy in a gift of Fortune, then you set yourself up to falter and fail to find virtue, and if you fail to be virtuous, then you will fail to find joy.
fin.