“This is what you should teach me, how to be like Odysseus — how to love my country, wife and father, and how, even after suffering shipwreck, I might keep sailing on course to those honorable ends.”
SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 88.7b
In today’s entry in The Daily Stoic, author Ryan Holiday points out that we have a duty to learn, and to always keep learning. He uses the example of The Odyssey as referenced by Seneca in the quote above, to illustrate that the moral of what we are learning is important, much more so than the individual facts and figures.
And he’s right. We do have an obligation to ourselves — and to our loved ones and people whose lives we are an important part of — to always be learning and growing. That’s what it means to be an educated person, a ‘good’ person, someone who is always striving to do what’s right for themselves and for humanity. You have to keep working at it, and looking for ways to improve yourself (while also being kind to yourself), and basically never give up on that quest to learn more about the world and how you fit into it.
Lifelong love of learning
I have two young children, and I can’t help but think of their future in this world with all the upheaval we’ve experienced the past couple of years: a pandemic, lockdowns, remote schooling, economic instability, inflation, cryptocurrency, racism, protests, growing disparity between rich & poor, the death of absolute truth, politics, violence, global climate change.
That’s a lot to think about! I know that I should also be planning for their educational future, in other words saving for their college tuition (cough, cough). But in the context of all the rapid change listed above, I wonder if there will even be colleges and universities when they reach adulthood? Will these types of institutional learning facilities still exist in the same form?
Recently I’ve decided that I don’t care if my kids ever go to college. That’s a bold statement. It doesn’t mean I don’t care if they’re educated — I do, very much. I just don’t think it’s going to matter if they have a certain type of degree from any specific prestigious school. I’m not sure it will even matter if they have a 4-year degree, or perhaps any degree at all.
I do think it will matter if they’re educated, but what I’ve done is give my children the tools to self-educate, so that no matter happens with organized schooling systems, they will always be able to teach themselves (with my help) what they need to learn, and how to follow their passions to deeper understanding.
I want to make sure my children have a lifelong love of learning, and that they know how to efficiently and critically absorb new information. That’s what will give them a leg up in the world, and give them the edge they need to succeed. That’s how a stoic parent prepares their child to understand the world.
The flip side
On the flip side, we have those people who feel no urgency to keep improving, to keep learning.
My good friend recently made it clear to me that he could. not. fathom. my constant interest in improving myself. He seemed to feel threatened by it, in a way.
He expressed his concern about my mental state and why I would need to keep focusing on where I fall short as a person and where I need to improve. And he made it clear that just doesn’t spend any time thinking about these things for himself, that he’s “just chill”, and that by trying to identify areas for growth in myself, that that was a flaw somehow.
It bothers me that my friend shows no understanding of my goals for personal growth, and seems to have very limited aspirations for himself in those areas as well. However, that is not my concern. As a stoic, my concern is about what I can control, and that’s ensuring that I, myself, am always learning.
