Letters from a Stoic
Seneca
Seneca writing to a friend about how to live. I read them like the letters were addressed to me.
Seneca was a rich, powerful Roman who spent years advising Nero, which is a strange job for a philosopher. Late in life he wrote a long run of letters to his friend Lucilius, each one about a single idea: time, friendship, fear, money, death, how to read. They're short, direct and full of practical advice from someone who plainly didn't always follow it himself.
The very first letter is about time. He tells Lucilius to hold on to every hour, because time is the only thing that is truly ours and we let people take it from us all day. Another letter says to read a few good books properly instead of skimming everything, because a mind that's always somewhere new never settles anywhere. There's one telling you to practise being poor now and then: a few days of plain food and rough clothes, so you find out the thing you fear isn't that bad.
He ends most letters with a small gift, usually a line he's borrowed from someone else, often a rival school of philosophy. He doesn't care where a good idea comes from.
That's why I read them as if they were addressed to me. Nobody's lecturing. It's one person writing to another about what he's working on, and asking him to work on it too.
