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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. On a fateful day late in the fourth century BC, a Phoenician merchant named Xeno set sail on the Mediterranean with a cargo full of teary and purple dye.

Prised by the wealthy and by royalty who dressed themselves in purple clothes, the dye was painstakingly extracted by slaves from the blood of sea snails and dried in the sun until it was, according to one ancient historian, worth its weight in silver.

Xeno's family trade was in this good, one of the most valuable goods in the ancient world, and as it was for many entrepreneurs, a business on the line every day.

And on that fateful day, on a day not unlike one you may have experienced, Xeno lost everything. We're not exactly sure what caused his shipwreck, but it devastated him financially, physically and emotionally.

It could have been the end of his story. The loss could have driven him to drink or suicide, required ordinary life. Instead, it set in motion the creation of one of the greatest intellectual and spiritual movements in history.

I made a prosperous voyage, Xeno later joked when I suffered shipwreck. Indeed, we are all richer for it. This story is worth telling and retelling for a reason.

Maybe you just found out your husband is leaving you. Maybe you just got news that an accountant has embezzled your hard earned savings. Maybe the pandemic has taken someone you love.

Maybe it's taken something, a job, a hobby, a way of living from you, and you're hurting who wouldn't be. But destabilizing events like this are not entirely bad. They shake things up. They force new changes. They ask us new questions.

It's only after you've lost everything, Tyler Durdin says in Fight Club, that you're free to do anything. Xeno was freed by his misfortune. Life picked him up and shook off his family traditions. It threw him a sure peniless and lost.

But it also introduced him to philosophy. It put him on a path to greatness. It could have never conceived of otherwise. This, whatever it is for you, could be that. But if and only if you choose for it to be.

Anyway, that story of Xeno is just one of the stories we tell in lives of the Stoics. And check that out. The new book, Lies of the Stoics, Art of Living from Xeno to Marcus Realius. And just think Xeno is such a fascinating character. Along with all the other Stoics we profile in the book, check that out. Anywhere books are sold.

Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.