Letter 69

I do not want you to change your place and leap from one spot to another; first, because so frequent a removal belongs to an unstable mind. It cannot grow firm in retirement unless it ceases to look about and to wander. That you may be able to hold your mind in, first halt the flight of your body.

Then, continued remedies do the most good. Your repose and the forgetting of your former life must not be interrupted. Let your eyes unlearn, let your ears grow used to soberer words. Whenever you go out, in the very passage some things will meet you that renew your desires.

Just as the man who tries to cast off love must avoid every reminder of the body he loved — for nothing breaks out afresh more easily than love — so he who wishes to lay aside the longing for all the things in the desire of which he once burned should turn both his eyes and his ears away from the things he has left. Passion quickly rebels.

Wherever it turns, it will see some present reward of its occupation. No vice is without its bounty. Greed promises money, luxury many and various pleasures, ambition the purple and applause, and from this power, and whatever power can do.

The vices tempt you with a wage; here you must live for nothing. Scarcely in a whole lifetime can it be brought about that vices, swollen by so long a license, be subdued and take the yoke — much less if we cut so brief a time into intervals. Continuous watchfulness and intentness scarcely brings any single thing whatever to perfection.

If you will hear me at all, meditate and practice this, that you may both receive death and, if circumstance so advises, summon it. It makes no difference whether it comes to us or we to it. Persuade yourself that the saying of every most ignorant man is false: "It is a fine thing to die one's own death." No one dies but his own death. This too you may reflect with yourself: no one dies but on his own day. You lose nothing of your own time; for what you leave behind is not yours. Farewell.