 In the Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus begins by making a distinction among desires. Some desires are empty or groundless and others are natural; the natural are further subdivided into the merely natural and the necessary. Finally, the necessary are those necessary for happiness, those necessary for the body’s freedom from distress, and those necessary for life itself (Letter to Menoeceus 127). A helpful scholiast (cf. Principal Doctrines XXIX) gives us some examples; necessary desires are ones that bring relief from unavoidable pain, such as drinking when thirsty – if we don’t drink when we need replenishment, we will just get thirstier and thirstier, a painful experience. The natural but not necessary are the ones that vary pleasure but are not needed in order to motivate us to remove or ward off pain, such as the desire for expensive food: we do not need to want, or to eat, expensive food in order to ward off the pain of prolonged hunger. Finally, the groundless desires are for such things as crowns and statues bestowed as civic honors – these are things that when desired at all are desired with intense and harmful cravings. Keeping these distinctions in mind is a great help in one’s life because it shows us what we need to aim for. The aim of the blessed life is the body’s health and the soul’s freedom from disturbance (ataraxia) (128).