"It's in keeping with Nature to show our friends affection and to celebrate their advancement, as if it were our very own. For if we don't do this, virtue, which is strengthened only by exercising our perceptions, will no longer endure in us."-SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 109.15
("자연에 맞는 것은 친구들에게 애정을 보여주고 그들의 성장을 마치 우리 자신의 것처럼 기뻐하는 것입니다. 우리가 이를 하지 않으면, 우리의 지각을 통해서만 강화되는 덕은 더 이상 우리 안에 머물지 못할 것입니다." - 세네카, 도덕적 편지, 109.15)
Watching other people succeed is one of the toughest things to do-especially if we are not doing well ourselves. In our hunter- gatherer minds, we suspect that life is a zero-sum game-that for someone to have more means that we might end up with less.
But like all parts of philosophy, empathy and selflessness are a matter of practice. As Seneca observed, it's possible to learn to "rejoice in all their successes and be moved...
