"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"
About this Quote
Nothing steadies a person like the blunt reminder that “new” is rarely pure. Seneca’s line strips beginnings of their sentimental glow and pins them to something harder: loss, rupture, the shutting of a door. As a Roman statesman and Stoic writing in an era when power shifted on a whim and exile or execution could arrive by imperial memo, Seneca treats change not as self-invention but as a ledger entry. You don’t get renewal for free; you pay in endings.
The intent is tactical. Stoicism isn’t about denying emotion so much as denying emotion the steering wheel. By framing every beginning as the consequence of an ending, Seneca redirects attention from wishing the past would hold to choosing how to meet what’s already in motion. The subtext is a quiet rebuke to nostalgia and to the ego’s favorite story: that we can start over without admitting what failed, what was surrendered, what was taken.
The wording matters. “Comes from” is causal, almost legalistic, suggesting continuity rather than a dramatic break. Seneca isn’t selling reinvention; he’s insisting on sequence. That insistence has moral bite in his world: virtue is tested when circumstances turn, when careers collapse, when favor evaporates. A beginning is not an escape hatch from consequences but a stage built out of them.
Read against Seneca’s own biography - tutor and adviser to Nero, then forced to die by Nero’s order - the line doubles as a public philosophy and private coping mechanism. It makes upheaval legible, even usable: the end is not the negation of meaning, it’s the material beginnings are made of.
The intent is tactical. Stoicism isn’t about denying emotion so much as denying emotion the steering wheel. By framing every beginning as the consequence of an ending, Seneca redirects attention from wishing the past would hold to choosing how to meet what’s already in motion. The subtext is a quiet rebuke to nostalgia and to the ego’s favorite story: that we can start over without admitting what failed, what was surrendered, what was taken.
The wording matters. “Comes from” is causal, almost legalistic, suggesting continuity rather than a dramatic break. Seneca isn’t selling reinvention; he’s insisting on sequence. That insistence has moral bite in his world: virtue is tested when circumstances turn, when careers collapse, when favor evaporates. A beginning is not an escape hatch from consequences but a stage built out of them.
Read against Seneca’s own biography - tutor and adviser to Nero, then forced to die by Nero’s order - the line doubles as a public philosophy and private coping mechanism. It makes upheaval legible, even usable: the end is not the negation of meaning, it’s the material beginnings are made of.
Quote Details
| Topic | New Beginnings |
|---|---|
| Source | Lyric line from "Closing Time" (1998), a song by Semisonic written by Dan Wilson (album: Feeling Strangely Fine); commonly misattributed to Seneca. |
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