Zeno lost everything in a shipwreck in the 3rd century BC. A family fortune. His occupation. Everything. He washed up in Athens anonymous and penniless. When he died, an old man, some forty years later, he was not only prosperous, he was one of the wisest men in the world. He’d been offered the keys to Athens and an honorary citizenship too. The school he founded, on the old stoa in Agora, would influence millions of people for the next two thousand years. 

How did he do it? How did he recover? How did he make his way to greatness?

The same way that the NFL linebacker Ryan Shazier (and aspiring Stoic) would work his way back from that freak on-field tackle that left him paralyzed: One small bit of progress after the next. “Well-being,” Zeno once said, “is realized by small steps but it is no small thing.” Shazier once pointed out that football is a “game of inches” and so too was his recovery, from a hospital bed to a wheelchair, then gaining back the ability to move his muscles, then standing unassisted, then taking one step, then taking more, then being able to jog, then being able to do a three-foot box jump. The ceiling on his comeback? There isn’t one. He’s going to keep going as long as there is breath in his body. 

And so must you. There is no question that we face real problems right now. Perhaps you lost your job. Or you lost a fortune. Or you lost your wife or your self-confidence. Whatever the problem, whatever the cause—whether it was this pandemic or just an ordinary stroke of bad luck—the solution is the same. To keep going. To assemble your life, as Marcus Aurelius advised himself, action by action. Inch by inch. Stacking small step onto small step. 

Because no one can stop you from that. 

P.S. This was originally sent on April 24, 2020. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.