The Daily Stoic

There is a line in the Odyssey (most recently translated by Seneca’s wonderful biographer, Emily Wilson). Odysseus, still early on in his journey home, is speaking with King Alcinous, and telling him of his deeds in the Trojan war. Alcinous remarks that:“The earth sustains all different kinds of people.Many are cheats and thieves, who fashion liesout of thin air."Clearly, Alcinous has been deceived before and knows how to look out for such people. He had a good read on Odysseus and could tell, despite the man’s reputation for cunning and cleverness, he was fundamentally a good and honest person. What’s interesting though is just how similar Alcinous’s remark is to one made by another king, Marcus Aurelius, hundreds of years later.In Meditations, Marcus writes:“When you run up against someone else’s shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible?No. Then don’t ask the impossible.There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members.”The world is big and filled with all types of people. Some are honest, some are not. Some are good, some are shameless. Might it be better if all were the former and none were the latter? Of course. But that’s not the case. Nor will it ever be.So instead we must learn how to distinguish between the two, so that we may fill our lives with one and insulate it from the other. We must not go around expecting everyone to be perfect or reliable. We must accept that some people—for whatever reason—are destined to fill that undesirable quota of awfulness that the natural order seems to demand.Don’t take it personally. Don’t be surprised. Don’t ask for the impossible. And then, of course, continue to hold yourself to your own high standards, because that’s the class you belong to.P.S. Check out our brand new The Obstacle Is The Way pendant. Our hope is that when you encounter life’s obstacles, you’ll feel the pendant around your neck and remember that each obstacle offers a chance to thrive not just in spite of whatever is in front of you, but because of it!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

5 Jun 20193min

If Marcus Aurelius had his choice, he probably never would have been emperor. If he could have chosen how his reign would go, he probably wouldn’t have spent it at war, far from home, either. But that was how life went. Those were the cards he was dealt.What’s remarkable, though, is what he did with those cards, particularly in regards to the last part. Ernest Renan observed that Marcus’s Meditations—one of the most valuable and beautiful books ever created—came about because Marcus was “deprived of the ordinary society of learned men and philosophers” while deep in hostile territory.Marcus wrote in Meditations that “what stands in the way becomes the way.” Really, the quiet scribbling he did in his tent was incredible proof of that idea. If things had gone differently, if he’d been able to enjoy a reign of peace and comfort at home, he may never have written a word. It was only because he was stuck at the front, because he was lonely and desperately needed mental stimulation, that he ended up recording this stunning and unprecedented examination of his own conscience. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have needed to.This is something that we need to remember when we are stuck somewhere or reckoning with an unpleasant loss of control. First off, that’s life. It doesn’t always go how we want it to go. Second, we have no idea what good might come of this. Even our own recent past can show that sometimes the worst experiences and circumstances can turn out to have been for the best. And third—and most importantly—each one of us possesses the power to actively transform what is in the way into the way.Marcus did it. We can do it, too.Today, we are excited to announce an easy way to keep this important thought in mind. A beautiful sterling silver pendant, a literal and inescapable reminder that “The Obstacle Is The Way.”The front features a great mountain. The back shows Marcus’s enduring words: “The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way.”Our hope is that when you encounter these obstacles you’ll feel the pendant around your neck and remember that each obstacle offers a chance to thrive not just See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

4 Jun 20193min

Why did Marcus Aurelius write his Meditations? It wasn’t for an audience. It wasn’t simply to practice his Greek or his rhetorical abilities—he was already good at all those things. The book lacks an author’s note and he never seemed to have told anyone about his intentions, so we can’t know for sure. But there are two clues that, when put together, provide an answer as good as any. Have you noticed how much of Meditations is about other people? The opening, “Debts and Lessons,” makes up nearly ten percent of the book. Almost every other page has at least one quote or one story or one mention of a story about somebody else. So when we come across this passage in Book 6, it all suddenly makes sense:“When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them. It’s good to keep this in mind.”Marcus was writing to encourage himself! He was thinking of the qualities of the people around him. He was showering himself in their virtues so that he might be improved by the association. And as far as we can tell, it worked. Because he was a good man, despite facing incredible temptations and pressures. Today, we should follow this example anew. Maybe See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

3 Jun 20192min

In his twenty-third letter to Lucilius, Seneca opens with some meta snark that is relatable to anyone who has ever been trapped in a banal conversation at a boring cocktail party. “You were probably thinking I was going to open this letter with idle chit chat about the weather,” Seneca begins, “but I’m not, because who has the time?”Certainly not Seneca, who spends the rest of the letter talking about the joy that comes from the study of philosophy and the earnest pursuit of the art of living. Important ideas. None of these trivialities—the weather, ‘what have you been up to lately?,’ ‘how’s your mother?,’ ‘reading anything good?’—that he says are the refuge of people who are “at a loss for topics of conversation.”Topics like philosophy, life, love, death, virtue, fate and fortune. Real stuff.Life is short. You see and speak to your friends rarely enough as it is. New connections, as they happen these days, are rarer still. Let us not fritter that time and opportunity away on banalities. Let us push through the nerves of newness, through the superficialities of introduction or reacquaintance, to greater understanding and deeper connection.The weather. Your mom and dad. Traffic. These are trivialities of conversation designed to create quick, easy connection. To show us that we have something in common despite being strangers or not having seen each other in some time. But we are already connected. We already know these things before we say a word to each other. We are sharing the same space, so we have experienced the same weather. We are humans, so we all have mothers and fathers. We each got to this cocktail party from somewhere else, so we know what it took to get here.These little factoids are what put the trivia in trivialities. They are information, they are not knowledge or insight or wisdom. They are not fake, per se, but they are fruitless. They lack the abundance of the kind of real conversations Seneca had with Lucilius and countless others in his life.So get real. Speak the truth. Ask the uncomfortable questions. Share. You’ll be glad you did.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

31 Mai 20192min

There have been all sorts of wonderful technological innovations since Marcus Aurelius’s time, particularly in the domain of writing. We got the printing press. We got typewriters. We got ballpoint pens and erasers and whiteout. We got computers and smartphones. We have emails and tweets and audio memos. Journaling for Marcus wouldn’t have been easy. He needed ink and some sort of pen-like implement, and he had to write on fragile parchment. The supplies weren’t cheap. He needed to do everything by hand. We might think we are superior for all our fancy tools and real-time digital backups and copy and paste. But are we? In a recent interview, Walter Isaacson pointed out just how well paper has held up over the centuries: “Paper’s not a bad technology. It is really a good technology for the storage and retrieval of information. After 500 years, we still can turn the pages of Leonardo’s notebooks. From the 1990s, Steve Jobs had some memos on a NeXT Computer in his house. Even with his tech [abilities], we couldn’t retrieve that, because the NeXT operating system no longer can retrieve the documents that well. So every now and then, one of the lessons I learned is take notes on paper in a notebook. They’ll be around 50 years for ...your grandchildren or great-grandchildren. They’ll be around maybe 500 years.”It is remarkable that the simple letters that Seneca penned by hand to a friend survive to us today and remain best read in print. It’s incredible to think that Marcus Aurelius’s journals, which also endure, were themselves influenced by the notes one of his teachers took while sitting and listening to the lectures of Epictetus. There are fragments in his journal and in the journals and commonplace books of writers that preserve lines from Epictetus that would have otherwise vanished to history. The power of putting things down on paper should not be underestimated, particularly today. Sure, it can be a pain to carry books around with you. Every once in a while a pen breaks in your pocket or your bag and makes a mess. Yes, handwritten words are harder to search. They take up more space in your house than they would in the cloud. But there is something special and timeless and perennial about the art of writing by hand. It’s a more involved process—and that’s the point. It’s good that it takes more time and energy, because you’ll remember it more. It’s good that it’s physical and takes up space—this way you’ll pass it in the hallway when you walk by. It’s good that it’s harder to search...who knows what you’ll find when you flip through the pages, one by one. So what if it’s more delicate? Maybe you’ll treat it with the respect it deserves this way. Take Isaacson’s advice. Get a notebook. Start writing!PS: Check out The Daily Stoic Journal. It’s an easy place to start and is built around the Stoic journaling methods of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

30 Mai 20194min

We know that Marcus Aurelius cried when he was told that his favorite tutor passed away. We know that he cried that day in court, when he was overseeing a case and the attorney mentioned the countless souls who perished in the plague that had ravaged Rome.We can imagine Marcus cried many other times. This was a man who was betrayed by one of his most trusted generals. This was a man who lost his wife of 35 years. This was a man who lost eightchildren, including all but one of his sons. Marcus didn’t weep because he was weak. He didn’t weep because he was un-Stoic. He cried because he was human. Because these very painful experiences made him sad.Antoninus, Marcus’s stepfather, seemed to be a bit more in touch with his emotions than his young stepson. He seemed to understand how hard Marcus worked to master his temper and his ambitions and his temptations and that this occasionally made him feel bottled up. So when his stepson’s tutor died and he watched the boy sob uncontrollably, he wouldn’t allow anyone to try to calm him down or remind him of the need for a prince to maintain his composure. “Neither philosophy nor empire,” Antoninus said, “takes away natural feeling.”The same goes for you. No matter how much philosophy you’ve read. No matter how much older you’ve gotten or how important your position or how many eyes are on you. It’s OK to cry. You’re only human. It’s okay to act like one.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

29 Mai 20192min

For most of us, things are pretty good right now. The economy is booming. Our jobs or our personal lives are going well. Most of the doomsday predictions from critics and watchdogs have turned out to be overwrought or even wrong...so far. The world is mostly at peace—technically. The question—and the main thing that Stoicism is designed to help cultivate inside each of us—is: What will you draw upon if any of that suddenly changes? It’s easy to be strong and self-contained when there is very little threatening us. It’s easy to have momentum with the wind at our back. But when everything is hard? When all is falling apart around us?This year alone, the French have been rioting in the streets. The North Koreans have fired off short-range ballistic missiles. Israel and Hamas have exchanged rocket and mortar fire multiple times. The US is moving a carrier group into the Gulf in a showdown with Iran. Measles is breaking out across Los Angeles. And despite all that, everything is and should be okay. And yet if it isn’t...It was at one of the darkest points of the Revolution that Thomas Paine wrote his pamphlet, The American Crisis. “These are times that try men’s souls,” he said. A lot had gone wrong. Mistakes had been made. People were scared and upset. But this might be a good thing, he wrote, because there are some capacities inherent in us that cannot be unlocked by trifles. It was only in difficult times that we might find—and unlock—within us a “cabinet of fortitude.” The Stoic version of this idea was the Inner Citadel—a fortress of fortitude—that could be drawn on for strength in difficult times...if it had been properly stocked and built in good times. That’s what the study of philosophy was about to them, that’s why we do this reading and follow these exercises. To prepare for an uncertain future and to never be so naive as to expect things to always be booming and pleasant. It’s good that life is pretty good right now. Enjoy it. But be ready. Be sure that you have something to draw on in case of an emergency. Because the worst that could happen is not that the economy could turn or that your personal life could be upended or that war breaks out. It would be for that to happen and for you to turn inside to your cabinet of fortitude or your inner citadel and find it empty. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

28 Mai 20193min

It’s very easy to associate our possessions and our positions with our identity. There’s even an expression to that effect: The clothes make the man. When we have a powerful job, we feel powerful. When the market is hot, we feel like we have a knack for investing. When we are number one in our space, in our industry, in sales, we’re very into checking and monitoring the rankings. When people are saying nice things about us, we revel in it, because of course it’s all true and deserved.If everything stays well, it’s hard to see what the downside of this approach is (excepting the ego that can often creep in). It’s only when the screw turns that we realize how dangerous this has all been. Because when you associate your identity with externals when things are good, it’s impossible not to associate your identity when suddenly the same externals are showing you to be a loser or a fool or the object of other people’s contempt.The Stoics would urge you to remember that things don’t make the man. Not now, not ever. Epictetus reminds us that just because someone has more money than you doesn’t make them superior. No, only their bank balance is superior. If someone is an eloquent speaker, that doesn’t make them better than you either. It just means they have better diction. “You yourself,” he says, “are neither property nor diction.”Nope. You’re you. And you’re not measured or made by externals, or anything that is outside your control. What matter is who you are on the inside. What matters is what you do with the choices and situations that are inside your control. What matters is how you ride out the highs and the lows, and ideally are changed by neither of them.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

27 Mai 20192min