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Socrates sometimes look around the bustling agora of Athens, with its goods imported from across the world, and remarked, “How many things there are that I can do without.”
Socrates was of modest wealth, but had enough, and most importantly, he didn’t want more. This is a state his intellectual heirs sought for millennia because they realized how critical it was for happiness and freedom.
“If what you have seems insufficient to you, then though you possess the world, you will yet be miserable,” the philosopher Seneca remarked.
If you don’t tame your desires, then the more you get, the more you’ll want.
Epicurus put it another way: “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is insufficient.”
The idea is powerful. Whenever you tell yourself you’ll be happy if, the finish line will keep moving. You’ll never get there. Be content with what you have now, or you never will be.