On Peace of Mind, Section 2 — In Plain English

Seneca — The Senator

This same problem affects many different types of people. Some are fickle and constantly change their minds. They always love what they just gave up. Others just yawn and waste time. Then there are people like bad sleepers who toss and turn, trying one position after another until exhaustion finally lets them rest. When forming their life habits, they often end up settling on something not because they chose it, but because old age caught them there and made them too slow to change. There are also people who aren't fickle at all — but only because they're too dull to change, not because they're truly consistent. They don't live the way they want to live. They just live the way they started living. There are countless other forms of this disease, but they all have the same result: people become dissatisfied with themselves.

Seneca — The Senator Original

The same thing applies both to those who suffer from fickleness and continual changes of purpose, who always are fondest of what they have given up, and those who merely yawn and dawdle: add to these those who, like bad sleepers, turn from side to side, and settle themselves first in one manner and then in another, until at last they find rest through sheer weariness: in forming the habits of their lives they often end by adopting some to which they are not kept by any dislike of change, but in the practice of which old age, which is slow to alter, has caught them living: add also those who are by no means fickle, yet who must thank their dulness, not their consistency for being so, and who go on living not in the way they wish, but in the way they have begun to live. There are other special forms of this disease without number, but it has but one effect, that of making people dissatisfied with themselves.