On Noise, Seneca

I am particularly fond of the way Seneca describes the search for peace of mind in this essay. He is trying to study while his lodgings are over a public bathhouse. He goes into great detail of all the potentially distracting noises and voices that he has learned to seperate himself from in order for his mind to freely develope and not "ferment". He also suggests that voices grab the attention more than general noise, which I have to agree with. The key is having peace within so a "sound mind can freely develope" nomatter the state of things around him. He gives an example of a man trying to sleep, that demands total silence from his surroundings. Seneca said this man may toss and turn all night because there is a lack of order within, but yet he blames it on outside forces. The body may be at rest but the mind is not. He goes on to say that idleness itself is wearisome, and which is why humans never fully retire. Our ambition may be taxed or temporarilly stunted but is never completely taken away. This reminds me of elderly, retired people that have nothing to do except criticize the world around them. Seneca wrote that a truly busy person does not have time to become "skittish", and that staying occupied builds discipline. He goes on to describe the general anxiety we feel, in regards of how to respond to the engaging world around us, as normal. Gathering from the text, the less a man fears for his belongings and attatchments, the less of this anxiety he will experience in life. I really enjoyed reading this essay, at the time in a noisy laundromat. I felt that I could identify with this on many different levels, and found inspiration to more effectively seperate myself from the noises around me in order to study. Vocabulary Expansion: "strident"-(found twice in the text), "discordant", "Stoic Chrysippus", and "loggerheads".