After a particularly rough deep dive, the boss and I were just about to tuck into our sardine sandwiches when he said, “Mit, the trick isn’t getting more. It’s wanting less and still getting important stuff done.” And that’s it, right there.
Today’s entire incentive structure depends on discontentment. It's built to keep us chasing. A nonstop flood of aspirational content stokes that below-the-fold panic of insufficiency, keeping the consumption loop spinning: more productivity, more followers, more income streams, more clams. We assume comfort will save us, but it often drives us straight into compensatory excess. “Enough,” or the feeling of having enough, always seems just out of reach.
The pauper isn’t the one who has too little, but the one who always wants more, according to Seneca. Easy for him to say—he was one of the wealthiest Romans of his time. It’s the kind of idea that sounds reasonable when your fridge is fully stocked. But anyone who’s ever faced real privation knows you can’t philosophize your way out of poverty. An attitudinal shift won’t magically unburden your life of taxes, overdue rent, food shortages, utility bills, or household debt.
That being said, one lesson we can take from the Stoics is the instinct to make peace with simplicity. Not to become ascetic, but to stop playing a rigged game. Once you stop flinching at the idea of “not having,” you have earned yourself freedom. Know why I’m not afraid of being fired? Because they’re not even paying me. Nobody can scare you with scarcity if you’re not impressed by surplus.
The “boundaries nature’s law imposes” are food, water, shelter, health, and time. These are the essentials—what we need to survive. Not for nothing, boss, that’s why I don’t wear pants.