Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, into the real world. You need to hit the road. Seneca warned against escapism. Marcus Aurelius reminded himself that he could retreat into his own soul as easily as he could the mountains or the beach. Epictetus said to take great care with the inside and not what's outside. Yet for all this, the Stoics traveled widely. Marcus Aurelius visited Syria and Turkey. Seneca visited southern Italy and Greece, and in addition to his exile in Corsica, lived for nearly a decade in Egypt.
Posidonius lived and worked in many places in his long life, Syria, Athens, Rome, Rhodes, traveled almost the entirety of the known world. After completing his studies under Posidonius, Athenodorus traveled widely as a lecturer to Egypt and other Mediterranean cities before he became Octavian's teacher in Apollonia, which is on the coast of modern Albania. These were beautiful and critical experiences for them. It opened their eyes to a larger world, to different perspectives, to nature. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, Mark Twain famously wrote, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. This was true of America in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it was true of Rome in the first. Marcus Releus' passage in Meditations, which referenced being a citizen of the world, was probably shaped by the people he met in Athens and Tarsus and Alexandria. It's easy to be comfortable where you are. It might even be easy to use some of the stoic teachings to tell yourself that travel is exotic or even frivolous. But it isn't. It's essential.
We need to experience cultures other than our own, environments and geography other than our own, cuisines, histories, music, and stories other than our own. This gives us perspective. It opens us up to new ideas and inspiration. It builds character. Most importantly, it provides new and meaningful ways to gain wisdom. So hit the road. By the way, I have a chapter all about Herodotus, one of the greatest travelers of all time in Wisdom Takes Work, which you can grab as part of the Stoic Virtue series. We've got a new box set. I'll sign it if you want. You can grab that at steward.dailystoic.com.