The Hand Of Fate?

     Regular readers of this blog may recall that I have discovered in the past few months, based on a series of tests, that I have heart-related health issues. I was ultimately referred to a specialist who confirmed last Friday that I have high blood pressure and a low "ejection" -- not "erection" -- fraction, which apparently means that my heart does not pump blood as efficiently as it should. (In addition, I have recently learned, courtesy of the Cook County vital records office, that my paternal grandfather dropped dead at the age of 40 of a heart attack). My cardiologist put me on two prescription medications, which are designed to reduce blood pressure and the risk of a heart attack; she also advised me to cut my sodium intake and exercise more.
     So the concept of fate has been on my mind recently. It is a subject that Seneca wrote about often, although perhaps not as often as he wrote about fortune. One of the most succinct statements of Seneca's thinking on fate is actually from one of his separate discourses -- On Providence, which is also addressed to his friend Lucilius:
          "I am coerced into nothing. I suffer nothing unwillingly. I do not serve god, but rather I agree with him -- all the more so because I know that all things come to pass by a law that is fixed and is decreed for eternity. The fates lead us, and the amount of time that remains for each person was stipulated at our first hour when we were born. Cause hangs on cause. Things both private and public are drawn along in a long order of events. Each thing must be suffered bravely because all things do not simply occur, as we think, but rather they arrive. It was decided long ago what you would have that you could rejoice about, what you would have that you could cry about. And however much the lives of individuals seem to be distinguished by great variety, the total comes to one thing: the things we receive perish, as will we. Why, then, do we get angry? Why do we complain? We were made ready for this. Let nature use its bodies as it wants. We should be joyful and courageous toward all things, and we should consider how nothing perishes that is ours. What belongs to a good man? To offer himself up to fate. It is a magnificent consolation to be carried away with the universe. Whatever it is that has commanded us to live in this way, to die in this way, binds the gods too with the same necessity. Human and divine are carried along equally on a course that cannot be revoked."
     The concept of fate is difficult for modern people (myself included) to accept, perhaps because we want to believe that things happen to us for a reason. However, I can now see how belief in fate could be comforting on one level. After all, it discourages people from ruminating about why things -- particularly unwelcome things -- happen to them and to those close to them.
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     Seneca, On Providence, translated by James Ker in Hardship & Happiness (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2014), Book 5, 6-9, page 294.