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Happy Thursday folks!

Here is my favorite passage of the week, two quotes and book of the week with two important lessons to ponder on:

Passage of the Week:

American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman on intellectual enjoyment:

Two Quotes:

Book of the Week with 2 Important Lessons:

The book of the week is Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat. (The Stoic Virtues Series) by Ryan Holiday.

This is one of the important and must read book on the stoic virtues series. In this final installment in the Stoic Virtues series, Ryan Holiday makes the case for the virtue on which all other virtues depend. Of all the stoic virtues (courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom), wisdom has been called the mother of virtues for good reasons. Wisdom gives us perspective and uncovers truth. It’s the ability to see what’s in front of us with clarity. It’s approaching an understanding of the way things work, why things happen, where things stand now, and what might happen next.

Drawing on fascinating stories of the ancient and modern figures alike, Holiday shows how to cultivate wisdom through reading, self-education, and experience. Through the lives of Montaigne, Seneca, Joan Didion, Abraham Lincoln, and others, he teaches us how to listen more than we talk, to think with nuance, to ruthlessly question our own beliefs, and to develop a method of self-education.

This incredibly timely book both diagnoses the greatest problem of our current moment and offers solutions for the way forward. Wisdom is work - but it's worth it.

Here are two important lessons from the book:

1) Nearly every path to wisdom runs through books:

The average person watches something like twenty hours of television a week and spends nearly five hours a day on their phone. Almost nobody reads that much. We all have time to read. We just don’t do it enough. It’s about the craziest thing in the world. Imagine having a superpower: being able to talk to the dead and not using it. Imagine being able to talk with the wisest people who ever lived and not doing it.

When you think of the sheer price paid for the painful personal and historical lessons contained in so many biographies and memories and literature, it’s almost insulting how cheap books are. You can’t afford them? They are free at the library. It doesn’t matter that we can read. If we don’t, we are choosing to be functionally illiterate. Ther are many paths to wisdom, but nearly every one of them runs through books.

Sadly, too many people are not taught how to read, how to actually extract something usable from the books available to us. Because reading is a conversation, great readers are not passive. They put books through the wringer, they put the author on trial. They ask questions. They talk back. And they don’t just read occasionally, but consistently. Reading may be a shortcut, but it’s still a lot of work. Work that’s worth it.

2) Don’t Be a Know-It-All:

“Remember,” Epictetus told his students, “It is impossible to learn that which you think you already know.” Or pretend to know. Or refuse to know. How little we know when we think we know. How foolish we can remain for fear of looking foolish.

It takes real confidence and courage to put yourself out there. To say those magic, humble words: “I don’t know.” To say instead, “Tell me more.” To ask, “What else do I need to know?” To be willing to hear from people less successful, less credentialed than you, people you dislike, people who dislike you, people who have been wrong, people you don’t understand. To not just seek out a mentor or a master, but more important, to hear what they have to say. Especially when they criticize or challenge you.

We should take learning seriously, but never ourselves. There are enough obstacles already on the path to wisdom. What no one can afford, no matter how brilliant they are, is to get in their own way. To shut their ears or close their eyes out of ego. To become wise in their own eyes and thus able to become no wiser.

Book I am currently reading:

The Other Side of Change by Maya Shankar. Moving, practical and deeply grounded in science. The book offers a blend of captivating stories, cognitive science, and heartfelt wisdom to uncover strength in chaos, clarity amid uncertainty, and purpose after adversity. It will reshape how we navigate change, serving as an essential guide for anyone facing the unexpected.