Seneca Moral essays
Seneca: Let us add, if you please, to these grounds of…
Let us add, if you please, to these grounds of complaint the disposition of the youth himself, cut off in the midst of its first growth. He was worthy to be your brother: you most certainly did not deserve to be given 356any pain through your brother, even though he had been unworthy.
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Seneca’s moral essays. The reading beside it is ours.
Loss feels especially cruel when it takes someone young, promising, and not yet fully formed. We instinctively begin the case against the universe: this was a good person, this was too soon, this should not have happened. Seneca does not deny any of that. He shows how grief builds an argument from every detail—and how no argument can reverse the event. We should be careful here: accepting reality is not approving of it, and it is not a demand to stop caring. It is the point at which love stops fighting facts it cannot change. The person you lost deserved more time. You may deserve relief from the pain. Both can be true without giving you control over the past. When your mind begins assembling its endless prosecution of fate, return to one concrete duty in the present. Grief needs room, but it does not need to be given the entire courtroom.
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