Congratulations, You Get to Start Over

"It’s fitting that the story of Stoicism began with a catastrophe. On a merchant voyage between Phoenicia and Piraeus in the 3rd century BC, Zeno’s ship and all its cargo sank. Was it a terrible storm? Did jagged rocks tear their boat to pieces? Was it pirates or human error? No one knows. All we know is that by the end of it, Zeno was stranded somewhere in Athens, while his ship sat at the bottom of the sea."Find out how that story ended, and what lessons you can draw from it, in today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. Congratulations, you get to start over. It's fitting that the story of Stoicism began with a catastrophe. On a merchant voyage in the Mediterranean in the 3rd century B.C., Zeno's ship and all its cargo sank. Was it a terrible storm? Did jagged rocks

• 0:48Ryan Holiday?

  tear their boat to pieces? Was it pirates or human error? No one knows. All we know is that by the end of it, Zeno was stranded somewhere in Athens, and his ship sat on the bottom of the sea. And now, whether he wanted to or not, he had to start over. He could have resented this, he could have been bitter, but instead, he got to work. He assented to the reality, as the Stoics would say, assented. You wouldn't be reading this email if he hadn't, because without that assent, Stoicism would not exist. It's not fun to have to start over. Nobody wants to rebuild, or come home to a house with

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  two feet of standing water in it, or a bankruptcy to dig themselves out of. But we don't have a choice, nor do we know where it will lead. Who knows? It could be for the best. "Well done," Zeno would later say to Fortune, "to drive me thus to philosophy." "I made a prosperous voyage," he said, "when I suffered shipwreck." You didn't choose this, you didn't want it, it's not your fault. And yet, here it is. Congratulations, get to work. If you like the podcast that we do here, and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.