You bought Meditations and you skimmed it. You read the summary of Antifragile or Essentialism on one of those business sites. You’ve seen a couple of TED talks on evolutionary biology and psychology. You’re followed the election through a couple people on Twitter. 

So you got it, right? You’re informed? 

C’mon. 

Even as an old man, Marcus Aurelius was chiding himself “not to be satisfied with just getting the gist of it.” Instead, he knew he had to “read attentively.” He told himself he needed to go “directly to the seat of knowledge.” He continues to seek out tutors and mentors. He lingered, as Seneca said, on a small number of master thinkers, reading and re-reading their work until he’d gone way beyond the “gist.”

The wisdom the Stoics were often seeking, and have come to be known for, did not come easily. Today, in the modern world, understanding is even tougher—deluged as we are by misinformation, partisanship, distractions and infinitely more complexity. So you can’t settle. You have to work for it, really work for it. 

Starting right now.

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P.S. This was originally sent on May 19, 2021. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.