Ryan Holiday

The idea being like, we get to choose whose spirit we're going to carry.

you're not actually related to Seneca.

You're not actually related to Marcus Aurelius or any of your heroes, probably, right?

Not all of us come from really impressive families.

Maybe everyone we're related to is normal.

Maybe everyone we are related to is meh, but we can choose whose children we would like to be.

We could be the descendants of the Stoics.

We can walk in the tradition, the footsteps of these great people.

Martin Luther King has no

relationship to Gandhi, but he is, in a way, Gandhi's protege, the culmination of what Gandhi pioneered.

And we can be that.

We can choose whose children we're going to be, and that's what Seneca is saying.

And in fact, Seneca's brother embodies this.

In Roman times, it was very common for adults to be adopted by other adults if a family didn't have an heir.

This is Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus and Hadrian.

Marcus is very similar to Antoninus, not like Hadrian at all.

He chooses to embrace the stepfather-ness, right?

And Seneca's brother is in the Bible as Gio.

He changes his name when he's adopted by this family, and he was a great man.

So the idea, who are we gonna choose to be descended from?