Welcome to Stoic Snippets,
The philosophy that is short in length but not in depth.
This one's called How to Feel Poor.
We live in a time where poverty is at an all-time low.
The access to food for almost all of us is now unrivaled.
Our ancestors would lose their prehistoric minds walking through a grocery store.
The meals that we eat every day are akin to what only the royals could have just a few hundred years ago.
For even more perspective consider that 200 years ago the average person lived on less than one dollar a day and that's in today's money.
But I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you don't feel rich.
I mean I would say that most of us don't even think that we have enough.
What's interesting is we speak about the 1% all the time but what we forget is that globally you and I,
Listening to this,
We are the 1%.
Historically also we are the 1%.
The 1% that has access to more food than anyone else in history.
Access to warmth like never before,
Central heating,
Beautiful clothing that keeps us warm.
But somehow we don't feel like we have enough.
And that leads beautifully to one of Seneca's most famous writings.
It goes like so.
It is not the man who has too little who is poor,
But the one who hankers after more.
What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man's safe or in his bonds?
How many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest?
If he is always after what is another's and only counts what he has yet to get,
Never what he has already,
You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth?
First,
Having what is essential and second,
Having what is enough.
As he writes,
Of course you need to cover the essentials in your life but then it's actually up to you to decide what is enough and be careful about always wanting more because it's that scarcity mindset that makes you and I feel poor and potentially jealous.
We can counteract this though by recognizing how much we have already and being grateful for it.
You can do that right now.
In the review to this,
Leave a comment about what you're grateful for today and counteract that feeling of being poor.
