10: What Should One Wish Or Pray For?

     The subjects of praying and wishing come up often in Seneca's letters to his friend Lucilius. For example, in the tenth letter, Seneca advises Lucilius that, if he is going to pray to the gods, he should ask them for excellence of mind and mental well being before asking for physical health. And in Letter 32, there is the following extraordinary passage:
          "There were other things your parents wished for you to have; what I wish for you is to have contempt for all their bountiful wishes. In their prayers, many are robbed to make you rich: whatever they transfer to you, they must take from someone else. My wish is this: may you be your own master; may your mind, which is now driven this way and that by its concerns, come at last to a halt, sure and content in itself; may you come to understand those true goods that belong to you in the moment you understand them, and feel no need of additional years. In order to rise above necessities, to gain one's discharge, to be free, one must live a life that is already complete."
     The initial purpose of this blog was to explore the concept of moderation. So my readers will perhaps not find it surprising that I consider myself to be an agnostic, one who has not taken a final position on the issue of whether God exists or does not exist (arguably, both extreme positions). Seneca was most certainly not an agnostic, a topic I intend to explore in another post. And -- contrary to Seneca's advice -- when I have prayed, it has usually been for the physical health of those close to me: my wife, during her two battles with cancer; my mother, when her appendix burst and she had to have emergency surgery; and my aunt, during her two battles with cancer (the second of which has just started). I do not think that such prayers are inconsistent with moderation. But perhaps I am guilty of the charge often leveled against moderates -- that we like to have our cake and eat it, too.
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     Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius, Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2015), Letter 10, 4, page 45; see also Letter 32, 4-5, page 109.