About silence and the searchfor the internal balance by Seneca

If you are the type of person who thinks that to study, work or sleep you need to be in a dome of silence, that any kind of noise takes your attention away.Good! Stay here with us until the end, because today we are going to hear advice about silence and study from one of the greatest Stoic philosophers of antiquity, Seneca. Through your fifty-sixth letter to Lucílio, called: about silence and the searchfor the internal balance.

Seneca begins his letter by saying thatI'll be damned if I think silence is something required of a man who isolates himself to study!

Note that he already demonstrates that the noise around us should not be an excuse for our inability to concentrate. This becomes clear as snow when he lists an entire paragraph of examples of noises that were made next to his work office. Including the fact that his quarters were directly over a bathing establishment, so there were a variety of sounds, which are strong enough to make him wish he were deaf.

According to Seneca, all the movement on the street and his neighbors could be heard from his room, endless and hateful noises. Some, reading his letter, might wonder: “What iron nerves or deadened ears he must have, so that his mind can withstand so many noises, so diverse and so discordant.”

However, Seneca explains that all this noise means no more to him than the sound of waves or falling water. Even though in a certainoccasion Legend has it that a certain tribe once moved their city just because they could not bear the noise of a Nile cataract.

For the philosopher we need to remain alert that words seem to distract more than noise; for words demand attention, but noises only fill the ears and beat them. The sounds that surrounded him without distracting him include passing carriages, a mechanic on the same block, a nearby filler or a guy who is demonstrating with small pipes and flutes in the fountain, shouting instead of singing.

But how to concentrate despite so many distractions?

For Seneca, we mustforcing our mind to concentrate, and preventing it from wandering to external things; everything outdoors can be a racket, as long as there is no disturbance inside, as long as fear is not competing with desire in our breast, as long as pettiness and lust are not at odds, one harassing the other.

So, Seneca asks, what is the benefit of a quiet neighborhood if our emotions are in turmoil?

You might think, good! He wasNight came, and everyone was lulled to rest. But this is illusory, This is not true; for no real rest can be found when reason is not reassured.

The night brings our problems to light, rather than banishing them; it only changes the form of our concerns.For even when we seek sleep, our sleepless moments are as frightening as the day. True tranquility is the state attained by an unperverted mind when it is relaxed.

Think of the unhappy man who courts sleep by giving up his spacious mansion to silence, who, that his ear may not be disturbed by any sound, orders everyone to be quiet, and whoever approaches him to walk on tiptoe; He tosses from side to side and seeks restless sleep amidst his restlessness!

He complains of hearing sounds when he didn't hear them at all. What is the reason for this feeling of agitation, you ask?

The answer lies in the fact that your soul is in turmoil; she must be calmed, and her rebellious murmuring controlled. You need not assume that the soul is at peace when the body is still. Sometimes immobility means discomfort. We must, therefore, awaken ourselves to action and occupy ourselves with interests that are good, as often as when we are under the influence of uncontrollable laziness.

Great generals, when they see that their men are mutineers, put them to some kind of work or keep them busy with small raids. The busy man has no time for debauchery, and it is obvious that the evils of idleness can be shaken off by hard work.

Seneca gives us an important detail about himself when he says that although people often thought he sought seclusion because he was disgusted with politics and regretted his unhappy and ungrateful position, referring to his exile to Córdoba after an accusation of adulterywith the niece of the Roman emperor Claudius, named Julia Agrippina, later known as Agrippina the Younger in 41 AD. Nyet, continues Seneca, in the retreat to which apprehension and weariness have driven him, his ambition sometimes develops again. For it is not because her ambition was eradicated that she fell, but because she was tired or perhaps even discouraged by the failure of her ambition's plans.

And so with luxury, too, which sometimes seems to have gone, and then when we make a promise to moderate luxury, at which point it begins to nag at us and, amidst our savings, seeks out the pleasures that we simply let go of, but we do not condemn.

In fact, the more stealthily and stealthily these desires for luxury come, the greater their strength.For all manifest vices are less serious;a disease is also closest to being cured when it springs from concealment and manifests its power.So, like greed, ambition, and the other evils of the mind, you can be sure that they do more harm when they are hidden behind a mask of integrity, than when we pretend that they do not exist in our souls.

Men think we are in retirement, but we are not yet. For if we sincerely withdraw, and have sounded the retreat signal, and despise external attractions, then, as I observed above, no external thing will distract us; no music of men or birds can interrupt good thoughts, when they become firm and sure.

The mind that is shaken by random words or sounds is unstable and has not yet withdrawn into itself; contains within itself an element of deep-rooted anxiety and fear, and this makes the person a prey to necessity, as our Virgil says:

I, who in the past no dart could make flee, Not even Greeks, with lines full of infantry. Now I tremble at every sound, and fear the air, Both for my son and for the load I carry.

This man in his first state is wise; he retreats neither from the agitation spear, nor from the shock armor of the enemy, nor from the rumble of the stricken city. This man, in his second state, has no knowledge, fearing for his own concerns; any scream is taken as a battle cry and knocks him down; the slightest disturbance makes him feel breathless with fear. It's the burden that makes him feel afraid.

Choose any one you like from your favorites, dragging his many responsibilities, carrying his many burdens, and you will see a portrait of Virgil's hero, "fearing as much for his son as for the burden he bears." You can be sure that you are at peace with yourself when no noise frightens you, when no words shake you from yourself, whether of flattery, false praise or threat, or just an empty sound buzzing over you with a meaningless noise. .

Obviously Seneca did not try to torture himself with noise and noise, he recognizes in the end that sometimes, when possible, it is good to take the simplest measure to keep the mind calm, that is, it is good to change the atmosphere and seek less noise around us , However, its central lesson is that there is no point blaming the noises for our agitations, as they are outside, they are external to us, therefore, the unresolved things in our mind, such as ambition, anger, fear, lust , for example, can be noisier than the external environment. And for this feeling, there is no stillness in the world capable of stroking and controlling.