How did reading Stoicism remove all the self-help junk from my life
and free up hours to read more good stuff
When I started writing this to you, I wanted to shed some light on how my first summer retreat and Twitter break turned into three more summer retreats, traveling all around Europe and not using the platform for over a month.
I didn’t want to write an “Am I quitting Twitter”-style post because another rant would be useless to you, and even if that was happening, I haven’t had the words to describe why exactly.
A letter in Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic explained it all.
But first, I want you to understand how Stoicism started and keep helping me to spend my precious reading minutes wisely.
For some time, I was caught in the world of toxic self-help, fake gurus, and hustle. I was switching between writings of stoic philosophers and books that can be summed up in 5 sentences.
It was peak action-faking. James made a great video on this topic that I recommend watching:
One day, before giving a call to our plumber because some of the stuff he recently installed broke after a week of use, I was reading this part in one of Seneca’s letters:
In one of his letters to Lucilius - this was happening 2,000 ago - he writes about how things were built back then (speaking about the quality of restorations around his old house) and how they are built now. Seneca’s complaints felt like my own.
We became homeowners two years ago, and if there’s something plumbers, carpenters, and masons can talk about for hours, it’s the good old days and how it was all better back then.
It’s a 2,000-year-old opinion. Is that fascinating?
Has the material quality worsened? I’m not an expert on the topic, but when we bought the property, it had an asbestos roof and some old lead pipes. Both are kind of bad for your health.
To me, it was shocking how stuff 2,000 years old can resonate with me, not in some high-level life philosophy sense, but during my day-to-day life.
I highly recommend trying classic stoic stuff; you won’t be disappointed. If you’re new to this, don’t worry. Here are the books that I’ve started with. They are easy reads but will give you a taste of how reading Stoicism feels like:
You’ll notice patterns, thoughts, and guidance you feel you’ve already heard or read.
Yes, these things have been told over and over in different formats over different platforms for 2000 years.
Cheers,
Akos