But to share with you today’s little bit of profit, I found in our Hecato that a limit to desires also contributes to curing fear. He says: “You will cease to fear if you also cease to hope.” You will ask: “How are such opposite things on equal terms?” That’s the way it is. Although they seem in conflict, they are bound together. Just as the same chain links the prisoner and the soldier, so these emotions that seem so opposed advance together. Fear goes along with hope. And I am not surprised that they proceed like this. Each emotion comes from a mind in suspense, each is troubled by expectation of what is to come. But the chief cause of each is that we do not adapt ourselves to present circumstances, but send our thoughts running ahead. So foresight, the greatest good of our human condition, is turned into an evil.

From Seneca’s Letter 5 (Book I) in Selected Letters, translation by Elaine Fantham, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 9.