You ask why I've withdrawn, and whether this contradicts everything I've said about living actively and dying in the midst of work. Let me explain.
I'm not idle. I work longer days now than I did when I was visible — but the work is different. I'm writing things down. Counsels that helped me when I was sick with the usual diseases of ambition and fear; observations that came late, when I was already tired from wandering in the wrong direction. I'm pointing at a path I found only after spending too long on other paths. The pointing takes time. It requires quiet.
When I was in public life — in the courts, in the senate, at the right dinners — I helped individuals with particular problems. Now I'm trying to help people I'll never meet, with problems they haven't encountered yet. This seems like retreat. I think it's the more ambitious project.
Those who seem to be busied with nothing are busied with the greater tasks.
What I keep wanting to say to anyone who will listen: be careful with what fortune hands you. It looks like a gift. It tends to be a snare — the limed twig that holds the bird fast precisely because it seems welcoming. We think we've taken hold of something; it's taken hold of us. Prosperity that we can't handle sends us into shallows where the rocks are hidden. We weren't capsized — we dove headlong.
The rule I've settled on, and I offer it simply: give the body what it needs for health, no more. Eat to end hunger. Drink to end thirst. Live under a roof because you need shelter, not because the roof says something about you. A thatch keeps out the rain as well as marble. The soul is the only thing worth wonder; to a great soul, nothing external is great.
Today's debt, still drawn from Epicurus: If you would enjoy real freedom, you must be the slave of philosophy. The paradox resolves quickly: philosophy's service is freedom, because it frees you from everything else that would own you. Submit to it, and you are emancipated immediately.
And three lines about what fortune gives — they build on each other and I want you to have all three:
Still alien is whatever you have gained by coveting.
What chance has made yours is not really yours.
The good that could be given, can be removed.
Hold only what cannot be taken. Everything else, hold lightly.
Yours, from the quiet,