The Daily Stoic

The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig experienced both incredible good fortune and misfortune in his life. He was born into wealth; he met some of the great minds of his time, from Freud to Arthur Schnitzler; he traveled extensively and became Europe’s bestselling novelist. And in that span, he also experienced two terrible world wars and was driven from his home by Hitler’s antisemitism; first fleeing to England, then later going to the U.S, before finally starting his life over again in Brazil, where he spent the last two years of his life. One would think that someone who had experienced so many good times in his first fifty years, would be unprepared for difficulty in his final ten. Not so with Zweig. During his many years of delightful and luxurious travel, he liked to play an interesting game—one very similar to a practice that Seneca had. As soon as Zweig arrived in a new city—no matter how distant—he would pretend that he’d just moved there and desperately needed a job. He would go from store to store, che