Massimo Pigliucci

And she was in grief, and the grief kept going on for a couple of years.

And so Seneca decides to write to her, and he says, look, it's perfectly normal that you felt grief.

But now you are becoming identified with your grief.

You are beginning to neglect your other family, your other children, your husband, your friends, your social duties.

Now it's time to intervene.

And I think he had a point.

So he's acknowledging.

In fact, he actually says, those people who tell you that you should not feel grief at all, evidently they have never lost anybody.

So he's very reasonable.

He's very humane from that perspective.

He says, you know, of course, if you lose somebody you love, you're going to go through grief.

The question is, however, can you get out of it in a reasonable fashion and reasonable timing and get back to what he saw as your duties as a human being to other people?

Your friend was important, but, you know, there are other people out there and they also need your help.

That's right.

So the stoic sage, the ideal stoic, is somebody who never goes through any trouble of that sort, right?

He or she always knows how to handle things.

But then Seneca himself says, look, sages are as rare as the phoenix, the mythological bird that rises from its ashes.

And according to Roman mythology, there is one phoenix every 500 years.

So there are not that many, right?

It doesn't happen.