The aim of a good education has always been to spark curiosity, the desire to understand the world and one’s place in it. Often, however, this is the very thing that gets sniffed out in our children. We tell them to read only these books. We instruct them to color inside the lines. We push them to take classes and join clubs so that they’ll go to the right college.

As kids growing up in Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright heard none of this. The brothers were told to read, yes. But the Wright house was full of books and the boys could pick whatever they wanted to read at whatever age they wanted—even those books with names like Darwin, Dickens, and Thucydides down the spines. Getting good grades mattered, sure. But when the Wright boys got invested in some creative hobby, their parents understood if they’d rather do that instead of study. In fact, their mother made sure never to throw out a half-finished gadget or thingamabob—just in case the boys came back around one day to complete the project.

“The greatest thing in our favor,” Orville later said, as an explanation how two Ohio brothers with little money and no college education learned to fly before governments around the world could, “was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.” 

Sure, maybe there were others who had more resources or bigger brains than the Wright brothers—but none could match their curiosity about flying. After all, it was the Wright brothers who one day asked the Smithsonian for every book on flight they had. And it was the Wright brothers who would stand spellbound watching birds fly around them, as if with enough time and focus the boys would uncover the secret hidden beneath their wings. The truth was they just wanted to know—needed to know—everything they could about how one day they might fly through the sky.

We have to do this for our children. We have to cultivate their curiosities, whatever they may be. We have to encourage their interests, without any thought of whether or not they might be able to profit from it. 

We also must cultivate this curiosity in ourselves. We have to show our kids that we’re never done exploring what’s possible, that we haven’t stopped asking why. We have to be like Marcus Aurelius, who was seen leaving the palace as an old man. Where are you going, he was asked? “I’m off to see Sextus the philosopher,” he said, “to learn that which I do not yet know.”

Because as we explore in Wisdom Takes Work, the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtues series (preorder here!), wisdom is not a destination. It’s a method—a practice, a lifelong commitment to learning, questioning, and improving.

Wisdom Takes Work, is about that practice—and how an absence of curiosity is a disaster for us all.

It’s been my honor (Hey, Ryan here!) and daily practice to write these emails to you each morning (I like to think it’s made me a little wiser). If you’ve gotten anything out of them—if you’ve enjoyed the writing at all—I’d love for you to consider preordering my new book, Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat. 

Like we did for The Daily Dad and more recently with Right Thing, Right Now, we have signed, numbered first-editions of Wisdom Takes Work you can grab here. Just like they did for those books, these will sell out—so make sure to get yours while you can.

We’ve also put together some awesome preorder bonuses for you, like: 

• Early access to the introduction of Wisdom Takes Work
• Two BONUS chapters
• Signed manuscript pages
• A special live Q&A with Ryan about writing the book
• An invitation to a philosopher’s dinner with Ryan in Bastrop, TX.
• And more!

Head over to dailystoic.com/wisdom to secure your signed, numbered first-edition and bonuses today!