W

September 10th

PREPARING ON THE SUNNY DAY

“Here’s a lesson to test your mind’s mettle: take part of a week in

which you have only the most meager and cheap food, dress

scantly in shabby clothes, and ask yourself if this is really the

worst that you feared. It is when times are good that you should

gird yourself for tougher times ahead, for when Fortune is kind the

soul can build defenses against her ravages. So it is that soldiers

practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no

enemies in sight and exhausting themselves under no attack so

that when it comes they won’t grow tired.”

—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 18.5–6

hat if you spent one day a month experiencing the effects of poverty,
hunger, complete isolation, or any other thing you might fear? After
the initial culture shock, it would start to feel normal and no longer quite so
scary.
There are plenty of misfortunes one can practice, plenty of problems one
can solve in advance. Pretend your hot water has been turned off. Pretend
your wallet has been stolen. Pretend your cushy mattress was far away and
that you have to sleep on the floor, or that your car was repossessed and you
have to walk everywhere. Pretend you lost your job and need to find a new
one. Again, don’t just think about these things, but live them. And do it now,
while things are good. As Seneca reminds us: “It is precisely in times of
immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for
occasions of greater stress.... If you would not have a man flinch when the
crisis comes, train him before it comes.”