I’ve been working my way through Seneca’s “Letters from a Stoic”. It’s a slower go for me than “Meditations”. It’s a little more academic than “Meditations” with a good amount of discussion of abstract “virtue” and the like. The style in “Letters” isn’t as approachable as the personal dialog in “Meditations”.
Now that I’m two-thirds of the way through, I’m starting to get into it more. I quite enjoyed Letter XCII On the Happy Life. My take away from this letter is that it’s all about the process of aiming towards virtue and reason. Everything else is a distraction. From the text:
But
He in whose body virtue dwells, and spirit
E’er present
is equal to the gods; mindful of his origin, he strives to return thither. No man does wrong in attempting to regain the heights from which he once came down.
The happiness is in the striving.