Seneca, Moral Epistle 99.4-5
“But most people don’t add up how many things they have gained, how much joy they have experienced. This grief of yours has this problem among others: not only is it excessive, it is also ungrateful. Have you had a friend like this for no reason at all? Is it worthless that you have had so many years, such a profound sharing of life, so deep a well of shared interests? Do you entomb friendship with the friend? Why mourn that you lost if you gained nothing to have had it in the first place?
Believe me, a great part of those we have loved remains with us even after fortune has removed them. What has passed is ours and no time better safeguarded than what has already been. We remain ungrateful for what we had because we hang on the hope of the future as if the future–provided we have any at all–will not quickly join the past.
Whoever finds joy only in the present chooses a limit for the enjoyment of things. the future and the past also delight us, one by anticipation, the other through memory. But one is only potential and may not happen, while the the other necessarily happened.”
“Sed plerique non computant, quanta perceperint, quantum gavisi sint. Hoc habet inter reliqua mali dolor iste: non supervacuus tantum, sed ingratus est. Ergo quod habuisti talem amicum, periit opera? Tot annis, tanta coniunctione vitae, tam familiari studiorum societate nil actum est? Cum amico effers amicitiam? Et quid doles amisisse, si habuisse non prodest? Mihi crede, magna pars ex iis, quos amavimus, licet ipsos casus abstulerit, apud nos manet. Nostrum est, quod praeteriit, tempus nec quicquam est loco tutiore quam quod fuit. Ingrati adversus percepta spe futuri sumus, quasi non quod futurum est, si modo successerit nobis, cito in praeterita transiturum sit. Anguste fructus rerum determinat, qui tantum praesentibus laetus est; et futura et praeterita delectant, haec exspectatione, illa memoria, sed alterum pendet et non fieri potest, alterum non potest non fuisse.
