Stop wandering about! You aren’t likely to read your own notebooks, or ancient histories, or the anthologies you’ve collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue—if you care for yourself at all—and do it while you can.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.14
The purpose of all our reading and studying is to aid us in the pursuit of the good life (and death). At some point, we must put our books aside and take action. So that, as Seneca put it, the “words become works.” There is an old saying that a “scholar made is a soldier spoiled.” We want to be both scholars and soldiers—soldiers in the good fight.
That’s what’s next for you. Move forward, move onward. Another book isn’t the answer. The right choices and decisions are. Who knows how much time you have left, or what awaits us tomorrow?
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman