“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
The year is 54 AD. Seneca, king of the Stoic orators, is not long back from his exile on Corsica. Emperor Claudius accused him of adultery and banished him to a Mediterranean island. The French call it L‘Isle de Beauté – the Beautiful Island. As far as exiles go, it’s not so bad.
Don’t you wish, sometimes at least, a Roman emperor would banish you to a Mediterranean island?
Sitting in the main hall of the Domus Aurea, the Roman extravagance that Nero likes to call home, I’m hoping the Emperor and my paths don’t cross. Nero is a psychopath, full of debauchery, excess and reckless tyranny. I’m just a father out to get some parenting advice from the great Stoic thinker, Seneca, Emperor Nero’s chief advisor.
I’m unnerved by the 100-foot golden statue of Nero which he has built, in honour of himself, in the goddamn reception. I thought Sun Tzu was narcissistic, Nero is taking self-aggrandisement to magical levels.
Beyond the towering statue, long stone corridors of power extend in all directions. I’m at the cross-roads of democracy. Waiting with ancient flamboyance in one of these marble meeting rooms is my Stoic parenting advisor for the day. I’m not going to lie, it was hard to get the meeting and had to call in a few favours.
The Stoics are hard to pin down, they, like the philosophies they embody – flickering between Platonic thought and Buddhist rebuttal of desire – aren’t easy to decipher. Seneca, considered perhaps the most accessible and interesting of the Stoics, doesn’t have Zoom.
“Make the trip on foot,” he’d said. “It’s easy to get to Rome in 54 AD. And besides, your children are worth the investment.”
So I walked.
“Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.”
A young servant comes to fetch me. “Mr Apocalypse,” he whispers, already using the lack of volume in his voice to add gravitas. “Welcome to ancient Rome. I’m Epictetus. I’m here on work experience. Seneca is ready to see you now.”
I’m not disappointed by Seneca’s simple yet luxurious office. It is everything an ancient Stoic would want: refined, modest, classic, unhinged, a touch of madness. Marble busts of Zeno, Cleathes and Epicurus. Maps and scrolls, discourse and rhetoric. His desk is a mess. No doubt there is reason.
Seneca is a busy man, no time for pleasantries or idle chit-chat. “Get to the point,” he screams, as if fighting lions in the Flavian Amphitheatre.
“I like your quote on travel and vigour of the mind Seneca,” I say, flawed by the juxtaposition of it all. “But there’s a travel ban.”
“The two things must be mingled and varied, solitude and joining a crowd: the one will make us long for people and the other for ourselves, and each will be the remedy for the other.”
“We’re all done with the solitude,” I say. “Bring on the crowds. When are the restaurants going to open?”
Balance and patience.
At the heart of Seneca’s philosophy, and Stoicism more generally, was how little control we have over external events. Examining your feelings of lockdowns and curfews and silver linings and how they mould into your parenting philosophy is essential in helping you remember how stunted and irrelevant your control is.
Will we all, once again, crave solitude in five years?
“I need some fatherly advice, Seneca. Stoic quotes for parents. Can your ancient wisdom make me a better, more rounded father? Can Stoicism bring personal freedom from the trappings of materialism and modern life?
“We are in the habit of saying it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be.”
What do you mean Seneca? The dice of fate are only rolled once in your life, after that your decisions define you; your choices are all you have. All you are. If you want to be the example your kids seek to follow, then be the example. Choice is inherent.
Perhaps there is no such thing as freewill, but are there degrees?
Seneca doesn’t know he’ll be dead in a few years, forced to kill himself by Nero.
The 100-foot statue Seneca, it’s a clue. The man is bat-shit crazy.
I don’t say that. Instead, admiring his curly beard, I say, “Seneca, last week Luca was building a citadel out of Lego. It was similar to your Domus Aurea, but it wobbled. He hasn’t grasped the importance of foundations.”
Seneca nods for me to continue. He likes the word ‘foundation’.
“He already has a preference for gold Lego. He built the Trump Tower. I didn’t know whether to help or knock it down. I helped. Alice saw me, sweeps in and knocks the tower down. She thought it was funny. Luca cried. They both looked to me. It escalated from there.”
“Envy of other people shows how they are unhappy. Their continual attention to others behaviour shows how they are boring.”
“Alice isn’t boring,” I say. “She’s four. But I agree: envy is the route of much unhappiness between siblings. I will strive to not be envious myself. Set a precedent. No entitlement issues. I understand. Assess things for how they are; no wishful thinking on how they may be in another universe.”
“Don’t forget,” Seneca adds, as he writes on The Shortness of Life with a rather fetching quill. “Stay the fuck off the Instagram of rich parents and Hollywood dads, if you are susceptible to envy.”
I have no reception; the marble walls are jamming the satellites. Time dilation seems to be working in my favour; Seneca is getting into his stride, distilling quotes and advice like the finest orator in ancient Rome.
“In a moment the ashes are made, but a forest is a long time growing.”
A forest… the forest… the forest of life? We are all but trees in the horticultural tapestry of consciousness? Parenting is a long game. You can destroy in a moment, but beautiful things take time. Your children are the forest. One day they will be giant oaks, whispering willows and we’ll be long gone.
Every day. All day. Not just one day.
“Seneca,” I say, admiring the view of the Coliseum through his open window. “I’ve spoken with Sun Tzu and Julius Caesar about this. What are your views on war?”
The great orator stands up and paces around his office. He’s much shorter than I imagined. Like the Statue of Liberty.
“A commander never puts such trust in peace that he fails to prepare for a war.”
Are you saying we must always be ready for another skirmish? Even in times of peace? As a father I would need to be vigilant, to understand that brothers and sisters fight, argue, coerce and negotiate. They would also be the best of friends. Swings and roundabouts. War and peace.
I ask Seneca about guidelines. Should I enforce the rules, dictate peace?
“Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.”
Seneca was telling me to be aware of the limitations; children will not always abide by the adult laws of the homeland. I needed a plan B, a simultaneous philosophy of understanding, kindness and open dialogue to run in tandem with the rules.
I’m hungry. The corridors of power are long and walking them has given me an appetite.
“Seneca,” I say, deciding to do some intermittent fasting, wondering what was deemed a snack in ancient Rome. “This morning I gave Luca bacon and eggs for breakfast. He wanted dried bread.”
Barley porridge, or a crust of bread, and water do not make a very cheerful diet, but nothing gives one keener pleasure than the ability to derive pleasure even from that — and the feeling of having arrived at something which one cannot be deprived of by any unjust stroke of fortune.
Sometimes I lose patience and just give them ice-cream and chocolate, Seneca. I know it’s only 11 a.m. on a Tuesday and they should be eating carrots and nuts and figs, but ice-cream stops children screaming.
They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.
‘The small things’ may have become the pillar of the twentieth century’s search for inner peace, but Seneca knew that two thousand years ago.
But why? Does finding joy in the small, day-to-day occurrences of life enable abstract notions of ‘happiness’ to be found in the most mundane of activities, the most boring of food?
Even changing a nappy at 3 a.m. can be seen in a new light, when you realise the next time you do it could be your last.
Time is ticking in all directions.
Clockwise, anticlockwise, atomic clocks.
My time was up.
“Thanks for the Stoic quotes for Parents, Seneca,” I say. Mostly for SEO purposes.
I few years later I came back to see Seneca.
The year was 65 AD. All of Seneca’s great works had been completed. Hercules, Medea, Oedipus and his other dramas of tragedy sent out into the world; his letters and essays containing his Stoic philosophies sent to Lucilius, procurator of Sicily.
Seneca looked haggard, but was as refined as ever in his speech. Forced to continue work, when all he wanted was a quiet retirement, he was philosophical.
I was going to ask him about happiness, but the door slammed open and Nero’s guards piled in. As the ancient barbarians dragged him from his office, Seneca seemed to read my mind.
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.
I leaned back in the chair and looked out of Seneca’s open window onto the roof tops of ancient Rome, clay chimney stacks rolling away to the pristine arches of the Coliseum. Sounds of life and history drifted across the stifling summer air, and then away. Men and women building hope, aspirations and dreams as the clock ticked forever on.
I’d learned a lot, and forgotten even more.
Somewhere, deep within the stone corridors of the Domus Aurea, a light went out.