I keep a piece of paper tucked into my wallet. It’s nothing fancy. Faded ink. Folded edges. It’s a quote from Seneca:
“That which is too little for luxury, is abundantly enough for nature”
It’s simple—but it saves me. Especially when I find myself five clicks deep in a useless product review, a cart full of things I didn’t need twenty minutes ago, or rereading the same outraged tweet with a hunger I can’t quite name.
Temperance doesn’t trend. You don’t see it celebrated on billboards or woven into the algorithms that shape our daily lives. Why would you? In the 21st century, we are pitched—no, pummeled—by choice. It has been reported that the average person now sees over 5,000 ads a day and “40% of all the money spent on e-commerce is attributed to impulse purchases“.
And here’s the thing no one wants to say: temperance isn’t just about self-control. It’s about preserving something essential—our clarity, our agency, our inner stillness—in a time designed to scatter them.
The Stoics, especially those like Epictetus and Marcus, understood temptation, though they didn’t live with TikTok but theirs was a world of excess, too. Power, status, indulgence. Yet their warnings are prescient. “Remember how long you have been putting off these things, and how often the gods have given you days of grace, and yet you do not use them,” writes Aurelius. It hits like a cold wind: How much of life slips away while we indulge distractions disguised as desires?
In my twenties, I believed freedom meant expansion. More travel. More projects. More apps. More open tabs, both in Chrome and in my head. But the older I get—and the deeper I walk with Stoicism—the more I realize that freedom isn’t about what you can do. It’s about what you don’t have to do. What you’re not dragged around by. What you can walk away from. That’s temperance.
These days temperance gets mistaken for minimalism, or worse, denial. But it’s not about austerity for its own sake. It’s living like your time and attention matter. Because they do.
We don’t just live in a time of temptation. We live in a system optimized for our derailment. Scroll through Instagram, and you’ll see ads not only tailored to your taste, but to your moods, your loneliness, your late-night weakness. The economist Herbert Simon once said that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” What would he say now, when attention itself has been monetized, traded, and reshaped into a business model?
There’s a certain rebellion in restraint. Not the dramatic kind, but the quiet, sturdy kind—the choice to stand still while the current rushes by. When Aurelius says, “you may depart from life at once, act and speak and think in every case accordingly,” I don’t think he’s trying to be grim. He’s telling us to prioritize. To stop letting every whim lead us. To remember that time is not just short—it’s sacred.
Practicing temperance today isn’t about deleting every app or living in a cabin. It’s more subtle. It’s noticing when you reach for your phone out of habit, not need. It’s choosing one dessert instead of three. It’s reading a book instead of chasing an endless stream of articles that all say the same thing. It’s choosing to feel your boredom instead of stuffing it. That might sound small. But that’s where change lives.
A few years ago, I went on a silent retreat. No phone. No books. Just breathing, walking, thinking. The first two days were torture. My brain, drunk on dopamine from years of constant inputs, rioted. But then something happened. A kind of clarity returned. The noise inside me began to quiet. I remembered what it’s like to want nothing—not because I was suppressing desire, but because I’d stopped feeding the machine that manufactures it.
I’m not trying to pitch asceticism. I’m just saying this: In a time of temptation, temperance is a form of power. Not flashy, not viral. But real. It’s the kind of power that lets you say no when everything is telling you yes. The kind that builds character when the world is busy selling personality. The kind that doesn’t need an audience.
And maybe most importantly, temperance brings you back to what matters. It helps you spend your finite life on things that nourish rather than deplete. It’s a muscle, and like any muscle, it grows through use.
“That which is too little for luxury, is abundantly enough for nature”
I still carry that quote. It’s worn and creased and silent. But every time I feel the pull—to buy, to scroll, to excess—I touch it. I remember: there’s nothing I truly need that isn’t already within reach.
What would Marcus Aurelius say?
Unsure what to do next in your career? Struggling to move on from a failed relationship? Searching for more meaning in life?
Marcus Aurelius can tell you how to face your challenges in a more Stoic way.
Simply ask your question, and Marcus Aurelius will answer.
