The Stoic philosopher Seneca observed that what makes a person genuinely happy is not how much they have, but how little they need

If you had to summarise Seneca’s most uncomfortable observation in a single sentence, it would be this: most of what you are spending your life trying to

Source: The Stoic philosopher Seneca observed that what makes a person genuinely happy is not how much they have, but how little they need to be content — and the small jolt of his observation, two thousand years later, is that most modern definitions of the good life are still organized around acquiring more of exactly the things he warned would never quite settle the longing they were meant to satisfy