Some of the Stoics found philosophy when they were young. Some were steeped in it from an early age, equipped with the best tutors that their parent's money could buy.
And plenty of them found it when they were older. Zeno himself had a whole other life as a merchant before that fateful shipwreck led him to a bookstore in Athens. Epictetus wasn't freed from slavery—and able to dedicate himself fully to philosophy—until his thirties. Admiral James Stockdale? He didn't even hear about the Stoics until the Navy sent him to grad school at age 35. Plenty of other leaders found the Stoics only after they'd reached high office or after their biggest successes, and it turned out to be the perfect timing for them. Seneca—a man who lost his twenties to illness, a decade to exile, and whose most productive years came during a painful retirement—is a reminder that it's never too late.
"Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when they are young nor weary in the search thereof when they have grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more."
It doesn't matter when you come to philosophy. No age is too early or too late. If you're asking if it's too early to introduce your kids to Stoicism or the wisdom of the ancients, it's not. If you're worried it's too late for you to pick up this book or that book, it's not. If you're wondering whether the time has passed for philosophy to make a difference in your life, it hasn't.
"As long as you live," Seneca said, "keep learning how to live." As long as we're alive, we must keep learning and wrestling with these ideas. We must ask questions when we are young and we must also remain humble enough to ask them when we are old, powerful, and well-informed.
Most of all, no matter our age or station in life, we must commit to the work that wisdom requires.
As we explore in the new book Wisdom Takes Work (preorder here!), there's a reason that wise people speak so little of wisdom. They are still too busy looking for it, still identifying as students themselves. True wisdom doesn't find us—we must actively pursue it. It demands effort. It takes work. But this work is accessible to everyone, regardless of background or circumstance.
We pursue wisdom for one essential reason: we need it. Life is a thinking person's game—decisions about our future appear one day, moral dilemmas the next. Complex problems. Complicated people. Confusing situations.
In these moments, big and small, the wisdom you need will either be there or it won't. The experience and knowledge and understanding will have been accumulated or not. We've either done the study necessary or we haven't. It is in that moment that we discover the reason that you can't spell "learned" without earned.
Wisdom, then, is a lagging indicator of work done long ago, the fruit nurtured from the seed planted long ago. You can only reap what you have sown.
This is wisdom's power: it's universal. It doesn't matter if you're 16 or 60, just beginning or nearing life's end. It only cares whether you show up and do the work.
If you're ready to commit to that work, you can preorder Wisdom Takes Work now.
Because we'd like to encourage you to preorder the book (it makes a huge difference for authors), we put together some cool bonuses for you, including:
Two BONUS chapters
A LIVE Q&A with Ryan Holiday
An extended, annotated bibliography
A signed page from the original manuscript
The Spotify playlist Ryan listened to while writing the book
An invite to a philosophical dinner in Bastrop, TX with Ryan and special guests
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