Marcus Aurelius read Epictetus so many times, it became a part of him. Chrysippus loved the play Medea so much and quoted from it so often that he joked one of his essays was the "Medea of Chrysippus."
And of course, it's not just philosophers who do this. Musicians fall in love with songs from other artists, listening to them, playing them over and over again until they are remade in their own image. Johnny Cash did this with "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails. Luke Combs did this more recently with Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car." The musician Phoebe Bridgers sings about this on her song "Chinese Satellite," and in fact, she actually did it on her album Stranger in the Alps with a cover of Mark Kozelek and Jimmy LaValle's "You Missed My Heart." As she explained in an interview,
"I have this thing where I have to listen to songs over and over if I like them a lot and I have to listen to that song over and over but then I was like, I have to play this. It's an extra level, I have to get inside it. That song totally resonated with me, I couldn't stop listening to it."
That's what we need to do with the Stoics. Not just read them, we have to get inside them.
Marcus wrote about how the philosopher is one with their weapon—like a boxer, more than a swordsman. A boxer just clenches their fist. A fencer has to pick something up. Through repetition, through absorption, we're trying to fuse ourselves with our philosophy. To make it instant, instinctive, inseparable from who we are.
This is why Seneca urged us to "linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works." Not skim. Not sample. Digest. Until the wisdom takes firm hold inside you, never to be dislodged.
The Stoics are not something you have read. They are something you are reading. Always. At every age, every era of your life. The world is constantly changing. We are constantly changing. Therefore what we get out of these books changes, too.
That's what The Daily Stoic (get your ebook edition here for $2.99 for just one more day!) is built around. To put the best of these master thinkers in one place, for daily reading, daily reflection, and daily application of timeless wisdom. When we released it nearly 10 years ago, we could not have dreamed that millions of people would be reading it everyday all over the world, but they are—spending a few minutes each morning or evening meditating on what Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus and Cato laid down all those centuries ago.
Because that's what this philosophy is meant to be. Not something you read once and shelve, but wisdom that you sit with. That you digest slowly. That you bring with you. That you live with—and let live inside you.
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