It could be said he was the most prolific writer of his time. He wrote hundreds of letters, dozens of essays and plays, volumes of natural history, and more. He shared his thoughts on the entitled Roman elite, the doctrines of Stoicism, the inevitability of death, the practices of gladiators in the Colosseum, the conquests of Alexander the Great…
But you know what Seneca didn't write much about? What he thought of himself and his job at Nero's right hand. It's like that line from Taylor Swift (whose album comes out today!)—Seneca would apparently rather stare directly at the sun than look in the mirror.
Contrast that with Marcus Aurelius, who was writing entirely about himself for his own examination in Meditations. "What am I doing with my soul?" he asks in Book 5. And then he says that he—that you—need to "interrogate yourself, to find out what inhabits your so-called mind and what kind of soul you have now? A child's soul, an adolescent's…? A tyrant's soul? The soul of a predator—or its prey?"
Journaling is and has long been a path to self-awareness. It's a way to understand who we are now and who we've been. It's how we discover who we hope to become and why we made the choices we did. It's how we stop being such strangers to ourselves and get to what's underneath, to make sense of the complications and multitudes we contain.
Self-awareness is not something you just magically get. It's something, like any form of wisdom, that you have to work at.
"One must know oneself," the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal reminds us. "Even if it does not help in finding truth, at least it helps in running one's life, and nothing is more proper."
From Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne and Joan Didion, it's work all the wise do. They put themselves up for review. They poured themselves—and their deepest struggles and thoughts–onto the page. So they could examine it. Question it. Improve it. Because what the wise know—and fools ignore—is that the unexamined life is not much of life, practically or otherwise.
If you're ready to start—or to deepen your commitment to—that work, Wisdom Takes Work is available for preorder now! The book explores how journaling, self-reflection, and other practical strategies to building wisdom can lead to profound self-awareness, transforming your understanding of yourself and your place in the world.
These bonuses will only be available for anyone who purchases the book before its launch date on Oct. 21. If you're going to buy the book anyway, we encourage you to buy it now to secure these exclusive bonuses.
Stop being lost like a fool. Start walking the path of the wise.
Learn more about these bonuses and preorder the book today at dailystoic.com/wisdom!
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