On Peace of Mind, Section 2 — In Plain English

Seneca — The Senator

Then they start feeling sorry for what they've done and afraid to try again. Their minds fall into endless back-and-forth thinking. They can't control their desires, but they can't follow them either. They hesitate because their lives can't grow properly. They decay as disappointments make their minds numb. All of this gets worse when they hate their difficult, miserable situation so much that they retreat into laziness and private study. But this is unbearable for minds that want to be part of public life. These minds crave action and are naturally restless. They don't have enough resources within themselves. When they lose the distraction that work gives to busy people, they can't stand being home, alone, or within four walls. They dislike themselves when left with only their own company.

Seneca — The Senator Original

They then begin to feel sorry for what they have done, and afraid to begin again, and their mind falls by degrees into a state of endless vacillation, because they can neither command nor obey their passions, of hesitation, because their life cannot properly develope itself, and of decay, as the mind becomes stupefied by disappointments. All these symptoms become aggravated when their dislike of a laborious misery has driven them to idleness and to secret studies, which are unendurable to a mind eager to take part in public affairs, desirous of action and naturally restless, because, of course, it finds too few resources within itself: when therefore it loses the amusement which business itself affords to busy men, it cannot endure home, loneliness, or the walls of a room, and regards itself with dislike when left to itself.