We ask people where they 'got' their degree. We ask where someone went to school. We hope someone will volunteer to mentor us.
This is wrong.
An education isn't something anyone can give you. It's something you get for yourself. It's something you take. It's not somewhere you went—to school, for classes, for a lesson—but somewhere you're going. It's not something you did, it's something you are doing.
By his own telling, we're told Seneca took to his education with gusto, that he cheerfully "laid siege" to the classroom and was the first to arrive and last to leave it. Cato was famous for his philosophical dinners, inviting the smartest and wisest minds of the ancient world to discuss the issues that fascinated him and the questions that puzzled him. Scipio Aemilianus, the great scholar-warrior of Rome, was "ever engaged in the pursuit of arms or his studies," the historian Paterculus writes, "he was either training his body by exposing it to dangers or his mind by learning." And of course, there is the famous story about an elderly Marcus Aurelius spotted leaving his palace in Rome. Where are you going? a friend asked. "I'm off to see Sextus the philosopher," he replied, "to learn that which I do not yet know."
It never stops. It is never handed to you. No, wisdom is something you must pursue yourself. Indeed, you cannot find a Stoic who did not take their education into their own hands, who did not give themselves a great education (even if they had access to fine teachers) and did not remain forever a student of life and literature. "Why do you wait?" Seneca asks us. "Wisdom comes haphazard to no man."
There's no shortcut to wisdom. No app. No AI bot. No secret formula. It can't be hacked, downloaded, or handed to you. It must be earned—through the same hard work people have done for millennia: reading, thinking, living, reflecting.
We have signed, numbered first-editions available like we did for Discipline Is Destiny and Right Thing, Right Now. Grab one while you can because they will sell out—just like they did for Discipline and Right Thing.
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Learn more about these bonuses and preorder the book today at dailystoic.com/wisdom!
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