S. Augustine. You find that Fortune is to you too unkind.
Petrarch. Not too unkind; too unjust, too proud, too cruel.
S. Augustine. The comic poets have more than one comedy called "The Grumbler." There are scores of them. And now you are making yourself one of the crowd. I should rather find you in more select company. But as this subject is so very threadbare that no one can add anything new on it, will you allow me to offer you an old remedy for an old complaint?
Petrarch. As you wish.
S. Augustine. Well then, has poverty yet made you endure hunger and thirst and cold?
Petrarch. No, Fortune has not yet brought me to this pass.
S. Augustine. Yet such is the hard lot of a great many people every day of their lives. Is it not?
Petrarch. Use some other remedy than this if you can, for this brings me no relief. I am not one of those who in their own misfortunes rejoice to behold the crowd of other wretched ones who sob around them; and not seldom I mourn as much for the griefs of others as for my own.
S. Augustine. I wish no man to rejoice in witnessing the misfortunes of others, but they ought at any rate to give him some consolation, and teach him not to complain of his own lot. All the world cannot possibly occupy the first and best place. How could there be any first unless there was also a second following after? Only be thankful, you mortal men, if you are not reduced to the last of all; and that of so many blows of outrageous Fortune you only bear her milder strokes. For the rest, to those who are doomed to endure the extremes of misery, one must offer more potent remedies than you have need of whom Fortune has wounded but a little. That which casts men down into these doleful moods is that each one, forgetting his own condition, dreams of the highest place, and, like every one else, as I just now pointed out, cannot possibly attain it; then when he fails he is discontented. If they only knew the sorrows that attend on greatness they would recoil from that which they now pursue. Let me call as witnesses those who by dint of toil have reached the pinnacle, and who no sooner have arrived than they forthwith bewail the too easy accomplishment of their wish. This truth should be familiar to every one, and especially to you, to whom long experience has shown that the summit of rank, surrounded as it is with trouble and anxieties, is only deserving of pity. It follows that no earthly lot of man is free from complaint, since those who have attained what they desire and those who have missed it alike show some reason for discontent. The first allege they have been cheated, and the second that they have suffered neglect.
Take Seneca's advice then, "When you see how many people are in front of you, think also how many are behind. If you would be reconciled with Providence and your own lot in life, think of all those you have surpassed;" and as the same wise man says in the same place, "Set a goal to your desires such as you cannot overleap, even if you wish."