Seneca: On Grief for Lost Friends (Letter LXIII)

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Seneca, as he begins his letter to Lucilius, wants to tell his dear friend not to excessively grieve over the death of his best friend Flaccus. He feels that Lucilius should not grieve at all because it is the wrong thing to do. Though, it is impossible to not feel sadness or grief over the death of a dear friend or acquaintance, but when you do grieve over a friend or relative, you should only feel a “twinge of pain…but only a twinge” (Seneca, paragraph 1). When we mourn for someone, we should not cry too much nor stop ourselves from crying for certain matters such as the death of a person. Seneca distinguishes the difference between the twinges with tears one should have as opposed to the act of lamentation. A person should never grieve so much and shed so many tears for the death of a friend because over time it becomes more than just grieving. Lamentation will shape into something worst then the feeling of sadness for someone who has passed. When we unduly cry, we are making ourselves be aware of our grief. It is our way to justify what has happened, due to the fact that no one cries in such a way just for their own well-being.
Seneca in paragraph two creates a possible objection that he may receive from his friend Lucilius. He feels that his harsh criticism from the first paragraph would leave Lucilius questioning the right to grieve for his friend Flaccus. But with a simple objection, there is a simple counter-argument. Seneca goes on to saying “Well, you are not proposing to keep him very long in your memory if his memory is to last just as long as your grief” (Seneca, paragraph 2). What Seneca is trying to say here is that just because Flaccus died, Lucilius is not arguing that he must grieve for his friend for the rest...

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...ing Lucilius not to do. From personal experience, Seneca has learned that because Fortune both gives and takes, “fate [does not pay] any regard to seniority!” (Seneca, paragraph 6). Death does not wait for old age, but rather subtly takes away when it pleases. Due to this, everyone is “liable to death as we are ourselves” (Seneca, paragraph 6). In addition, because liability does not follow any “rules”, anything can happen on any given day. This should give us more of a reason to reach out and create many more bonds and prevent grief from allowing us to reach “enlightenment” (Seneca, paragraph 5). To conclude his letter, Seneca leaves Lucilius with the idea that soon someday meet with the same ends as Flaccus, without denying the idea of another world after the physical world, as foretold by “sages” where those supposedly dead have gone on ahead in wait for others.

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