📮 Break Bread with the Dead

Letters to a Young Seeker (Vol. 2)

Greetings Readers!

Here is the second volume of our series — Letters to a Young Seeker (Read volume one, Don’t Forget to Live). For full access to this series, Sundays with Seneca, The Wisdom of Art, and other benefits, consider becoming a paid member. If you cannot afford it, feel free to request a complimentary membership or use this discount link. Be wise and be well!

The Novel Reader by Vincent van Gogh (1888)

Dear Fellow Traveler,

To break bread with the dead may sound like odd (or obvious) advice. But strangely, the birth of Stoicism may have started with this type of suggestion. As legend has it, when Zeno (the founder of Stoicism) was a young man, the Oracle told him, “To live the best life, you should have conversations with the dead.”

The oracle was referring to reading. But not just any books—books written by writers that have long passed. Books that have stood the test of time.

Reading as a path to the good life is an ancient one. Even Socrates—who did not write anything down himself—stressed the wisdom of reading. He suggested improving ourselves through other men's writings to come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Reading the lives of others helps us discern how to live our own.