It Is Solved By Walking

All of us are trying to find something. Trying to find meaning, love, contentment. Because we feel like something is missing. That’s why we keep ourselves so busy, why we kill ourselves with work, why we can’t be still.This drive is what allows us to accomplish things. So it’s not all bad. The problem is that when we do accomplish things, we often don’t feel that much better. We look back at the road we just traveled, we look down at the mountain we just scaled, and we think to ourselves: this is it? We never seem to fill the void.As Marcus Aurelius wrote: “You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.” Isn’t that exactly right?What we have to realize is that more is not the answer to our problems: more sex, more money, more power and renown. These will never satisfy the place inside us that never feels full. Nor will magical thinking, or plant medicines in the jungles of Peru. No, you don’t fill the void by fleeing from it or by compensating with externals. According to the Stoics, we satisfy it simply by living our life as nature demands. By being good, by being true to ourselves, by focusing, by not wasting a second wishing anything was otherwise or caring what other people think of us. We just live, as well as we can. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

21 Maalis 20192min

Gretchen Rubin is one of the most thought-provoking and influential experts on habits and happiness. She has written several New York Times best sellers, which have sold millions of copies, including The Happiness Project and Happier at Home. She also hosts the award-winning podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin. In short, Gretchen Rubin has thought a lot about what it means to live a happy life.Her new book Outer Order, Inner Calm is a playbook that helps readers discover ways to make more room for happiness in their lives. This is something the Stoics were often writing about—finding stillness and tranquility, ridding of nonessentials that clutter our lives, learning to stay calm and sane amid life’s chaos and craziness.In our interview with Gretchen, we asked how she maintains that inner calm with something so hectic and uncertain like a book launch,I think about actions, not outcomes. That way, I stay focused on the things I can control (more or less). So I don’t think about “making the book a success,” but “writing the best book I possibly can.”That’s a good rule for all of us—doing the right things, right now. Putting our best efforts into the tasks in front of us today. Taking care of the inputs and detaching from the outcomes. Not worrying about what might happen later, or the results, or the whole picture, or the opinions of others.“The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do,” Marcus said. “Only what you do.” Today and always, find clarity and tranquility in the simplicity of focusing on doing the best you possibly can in everything you do.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

20 Maalis 20192min

Seneca tells the story of the philosopher Crates, who was walking in Athens when he saw a young man talking to no one around. “What are you doing?” Crates asked. “I am talking to myself,” the man replied. “Be careful,” Crates told him, “for you are communing with a bad man!” Whether this young man was in fact a bad kid or not, Seneca doesn’t say. One suspects Crates was joking—unless it was his practice to go around insulting complete strangers. Or it may have been that Crates was referring less to the quality of that stranger’s soul and was instead making a more general point about the dialogues we are all prone to having with ourselves—conversations that are hardly productive or healthy. The writer Anne Lamott spoke of a radio station, KFKD (K-Fucked) which plays in far too many our heads:Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one had no talent or insight, and on and on and on. Maybe that’s what Crates was warning the young man about. Yes, part of Stoicism is getting in touch with our inner nature and listening to the truth inside of us. But another part of it is learning what to ignore—the voice of anxiety and worry, the voice of ego and hubris, the voice of fear, the voices of self-loathing and unending ambition. We have to beware of the many tones to that voice in our head, we have to beware of communing with that bad influence. It’s just as dangerous as talking to a bad person...even if that person is us. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

19 Maalis 20192min

Epictetus was born a slave. Quite literally, his name means, in Greek, acquired. Ultimately, he came to be the property of a man named Epaphroditus, who kept Epictetus chained up long enough that he became disabled by it and walked with a limp for the rest of his life.His body and his time and his labor were controlled by someone else. That’s what slavery is. But what’s remarkable is that even in this state, Epictetus retained freedom in one important sense, and it would be this that his teachings would later revolve around: People could do whatever they wanted to his body, but his mind always remained his to control. No one had the power to make him bitter, to make him lose his desire for life, to take away his power to choose to think a certain way. (You may recall the Hurricane Carter story in The Obstacle is the Way, along similar lines)Compare that to say, Seneca, who was perfectly free to live and do whatever he wished from the day he was born yet was driven by his own ambition willingly into the arms of Nero...an embrace that only death was able to sever. Or more dramatically, look at the rich and powerful Romans mocked by Seneca and Marcus and Epictetus alike who were free on paper but in truth were wrapped around the finger of a mistress or wine or a desire for fame. Or more ordinarily, the regular people who are enslaved to their anxieties, insecurities, or false impressions.It was this, AA Long writes, that is really the core of Epictetus’s understanding of Stoicism: “You can be externally free and internally a slave...conversely you could be externally obstructed or even in literal bondage but internally free from frustration and disharmony.”It’s really a remarkable insight and one we must think of always. Yes, every person is entitled to physical freedom. No one, thankfully, is legally enslaved basically anywhere in the civilized world anymore. And yet plenty of us are not truly free, not nearly as free as Epictetus was when he was still in chains.And that is a real crime against humanity.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

18 Maalis 20193min

Let’s take a second to meditate on this observation from John Cage, the experimental musician and student of Zen philosophy:“That one sees that the human race is one person (all of its members parts of the same body, brothers—not in competition any more than hand is in competition with eye) enables him to see that originality is necessary, for there is no need for eye to do what hand so well does.”It is a particularly beautiful and necessary insight for two reasons. The first half reminds us of something the Stoics believed very deeply as well—that we were made for our fellow humans and are part of the same collective being. “What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee,” Marcus wrote to himself. He wrote like this constantly. “The universe made rational creatures for the sake of each other, with an eye toward mutual benefit based on true value and never for harm.” “All things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other.” “Revere the gods and look after each other.” In fact, we made our Sympatheia medallion precisely because this theme was so important to Marcus. We wanted our own physical reminder of it.But it’s the latter part of Cage’s observation that is so timely, as it disputes and refutes a lot of present day’s knee jerk resistance to community and altruism. No, caring about other people doesn’t hold you back. No, the warm fuzzy feeling is not the only benefit. See, when you start to respect your fellow humans and see that each one has intrinsic value and purpose on this planet, it helps you understand those very things about yourself. When you encourage someone else to be their best self—to be hand or eye or arm or strong legs—you are encouraging yourself to be your own best self (and to understand your own unique role).We are all one...and yet we are each also singular and special. These concepts are not at all in tension with each other, in fact, they only make sense together. A body is made up of many parts, and each part makes a contribution that matters (some parts more than others, at different times than others). We need to remember today to take care of our other members, in addition to taking care of ourselves. The body can never reach its full potential if we don’t.P.S. We think that every leader and citizen should think deeply about this idea of sympatheia. We were made for each other and to serve a common good, as Marcus put it. That’s why we made our Sympatheia challenge coin, which can serve as a practical, tangible reminder of the causes and the larger whole we are all members of. You can check it out in the Daily Stoic store.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

15 Maalis 20193min

The way to make all your problems, even the really vexing and painful ones, seem less severe? It comes from Seneca. All you have to do, he says, is:“Draw further back and laugh.”When you zoom out far enough, almost everything becomes absurd. Think about it: We are monkeys living on a space rock. We are a split second of the infinity of existence. If humanity survives long enough, people will laugh at us the way we laugh at Neanderthals. People used to have serious arguments about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin or whether the world was flat. They not only thought kings were a good idea, they thought they had divine right! What do you think they’re going to think about the arguments we have today? Or even our cutting edge science?Even WWI is funny with enough distance. One archduke was assassinated and the entire world went to war over it. For basically no reason. And then, even after millions of people died, everyone was so stupid that they immediately forgot the lessons of the war and had to fight it again a generation later!The troubles you’re having at work will be ridiculous to you three jobs from now. Think about all the things you cared about when you were a teenager and how silly they seem to you today—now consider that this exact evolution will happen to you at middle age, and again in old age if you are lucky enough to live that long. Think about something that’s really frustrating you about your neighbor or your parents. Now imagine telling a person in Syria or North Korea about it. Your neighbor doesn’t mow his front lawn or trim his bushes? Your dad forgot about your daughter’s dance recital? They would think you were joking! You’re seriously telling me that’s what’s on your mind? That’s what bothers you? You’re hilarious!Draw back and laugh. It’s freeing. It’s a relief.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

14 Maalis 20192min

“I don’t have time to read a book that long,” you might say when someone recommends one of those epic volumes from the Ron Chernows and Robert Caros and Stacy Schiffs of the world. And Alban Butler’s The Lives of the Saints? Or Plutarch? Who has time to read that dusty old collection about the lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans?The answer is that you do. Or rather, that you should make time to study the greats of history.In Book Four of Meditations, Marcus writes::“And then you might see what the life of a good man is like—someone content with what nature assigns him, and satisfied with being just and kind himself.”What’s the “if” that came before the “then” he is referring to? We can only guess. That is the entirety of his writing on this point. But not unlike a Jeopardy answer with multiple possible questions, this one fits:What is it to study history and biographies?Marcus and Seneca and Epictetus were all intimately familiar with the lives of the greats (and not-so-greats) that came before them. And in this study they had come to know, as Marcus said, what a good life looked like. They learned from the experiences and the follies of the earlier generations—they saw across the pages of many books why contentment and justice and kindness were so important (and the perils of the opposite traits).So make a commitment today—this month, this year—to start reading more biographies. It’s an important step in the path to wisdom.P.S. If you want to try any of a lot of books for free, you might like Scribd, which is essentially Netflix for books. Click here to sign up for a one month free trial of unlimited audiobooks and ebooks plus free subscription to magazines like Bloomberg Business Week, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Fortune and the New York Times. Sign up today.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

13 Maalis 20192min

Last year, the writer Chuck Palahniuk received the kind of news that all of us dread. Someone he trusted—the book agent who had represented him for years—had been slowly but steadily robbing him blind. All the millions he’d earned from the royalties of his bestselling books were gone. All the financial security he thought he’d built up was an illusion—undone by the cruel deception and greed of someone close to him. In July, Palahniuk was asked what it felt like to lose all his money. He stared down at the ground. He was quiet. Then he answered: “It’s kind of nice. Writing was initially my way of saving money, because if you’re writing, you’re not spending. So it throws me back into writing. There are larger issues in life – the embezzlement is dwarfed by my father-in-law’s death. And there’s the awareness that I’m the person who got me to this place, and I’m still that person, so I can still turn it all back around, and come up with something really strong and vibrant and interesting.”First off, kudos is due to Palaniuk, because that’s a far more enlightened view than most of us would take of such a betrayal. It could not have been natural or easy to get to that point. The other stages of grief would come before such acceptance: anger, denial, bargaining. But it’s impressive that he got there.It’s also very Stoic. Seneca spoke often of the reversals that life has in store for us—no matter how successful or secure we might believe that we are. “No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune,” he wrote, “that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him.” Which is why we have to make sure that our identity and our happiness is not tied up in physical or financial things—because these things are not in our control. Seneca’s advice was that we ought to “possess nothing that can be snatched from us to the great profit of a plotting foe.”Chuck Palahniuk’s money was stolen. That kind of theft is always a possibility since money is never really “ours” to begin with. It’s just a number in our bank account. It’s something on loan to us until we spend it or until it’s rendered worthless by some government institution we don’t control. But our confidence—that sense that we’re the person who earned it in the first place, the person who has worked hard and sacrificed and created—that’s 100% ours. No one can take that from us. Fortune can take our jobs, unfairly tarnish our good name, or burn down our house. Can it change who we are? Our sense of ourselves? Only if we let it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

12 Maalis 20193min