I recently picked up my very well used copy of Seneca’s “Letters from a stoic”. It is probably my most read book - at least it looks like it from the outside. It has been a number of years since I last picked it up as I had grown a bit tired of stoicism. Or perhaps more tired with how it was used and portrayed in popular culture and hence rejected it somewhat myself.
There are also parts of it that spoke to me when I was younger but no longer carry the same weight as I have aged.
I will not disclose what caused me to pick up a stoic book once again, but I am glad that I did.
What I will do though is have a little discussion with myself regarding the first letter in the book, which for some reason starts with letter 2. What a tease, then I will have to figure out what happened to letter 1?
Letter 2 hit me hard, as you can probably tell by me writing about it here. It highlighted an issue that I seem to struggle with.
Letter 2 deals with the problem of choices. In it Seneca comes with a lot of examples of how choices lures us away from what is important.
To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
And in relation to books:
A multitude of books only gets in ones way. So if you are unable to read when you have all the books in your possession, you have enough when you have all the books you are able to read.
You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find lasting place in your mind.
I will expand on other examples later, but this really hit me hard. I have been flailing all over with books lately. Starting 3,4,5 at the time and only rarely finishing any of them. I can even go further and question my unofficial goal of reading 12 books a year. Why is that a goal? Especially when I time and time again is annoyed at the fact that I can look at a number of books I have read in my large collection and struggle to even give more than a full sentence of excerpt from it - probably even forgetting a lot of them totally.
Of course not all books are created or treated equally. Some are read just for entertainment, to wind down instead of watching something and hence should not live up to the same scrutiny as works read for their wisdom or lasting impact. But it is without doubt that too many of the books I read end up in the “forgotten” category no matter their importance or quality.
Reading Seneca’s words hence made me reflect whether I should reconsider my approach to reading. Spend more time re-reading books that I really like and feel like there are lessons to be gained from instead of always looking for new books? I can easily think of a handful of books that I would like to read again either as they are classics that I think I perhaps did not understand properly the first time or because they are books that I feel like I could gain some important lessons from.
But how to decide?
I will return to that question.
Because it extends way beyond books. I can see myself flailing in my career. I have a privileged career in IT as a freelance consultant, but I keep thinking about other career options. Should I switch to become a carpenter? Should I start a career as a mechanic? Should I start a gym or find some other way to make money of my extensive knowledge surrounding training? I keep going over all of these and others time and time again.
Then it comes to cameras. I love taking photos. But I keep going over whether I should buy another camera and if so which one? The honest truth is that the one I have is actually the one I love the most (Fujifilm X-T2). Last year I had a Nikon Zf and an X-Pro3 as well. The former which I sold the latter I had to return as there was an issue with it. But for the last 6 months I have been going back and forth over whether I should buy either one again or perhaps the X-T5, X-E5 or wait for a release later this year from Fujifilm. The fact of the matter remains - I have yet to find an example of pictures I have taken with the X-T2 that I regret not having taken with a better, newer, faster camera.
And the pattern repeats itself with motorcycles.
With clothes.
With …
Thinking over this and what really prompted me to write this was this:
How does a “legitimate” wish for something new distinguish itself from an “illegitimate” one?
And I have a really hard time answering that question. Or perhaps I just find it hard to come to terms with the answer?
The obvious one is that I probably have “enough” of almost everything. I would never “need” a new camera until the old one is broken. I would never “need” a new book as I have already all the ones I can possibly read. I have all the clothes I need. If something breaks or tears then I have a need.
But is that the answer?
Is all of our/my wishes for new things obsolete? Perhaps they are if I go to the root of the matter. Because any negotiation away from that fact muddies the picture so much that you are back to square one and a perpetual longing for new, faster, smarter whatever.
So perhaps the answer is simple. But just difficult to live with.