Advance, Forlorn Hope

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$149 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$299 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

0:37Everything they sell has high standards to help you shop with confidence. Enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market.

0:50Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

1:42Advance Forlorn Hope Marcus Aurelius tried to arrest the decline of the Roman Empire, but he did not succeed. Before him, Cato tried to stop the fall of the Republic and similarly failed. Thrasia and Helvidius and Rutilius Rufus fought valiantly against Nero, but he triumphed over them. In the end, it was Nero who stood over each of their corpses. Was it all pointless then? Should they have adapted instead of opposing? Should they have accepted the inevitable? That's what the Stoics seem to say sometimes, right? In his haunting poem, Doubtful Dreams, Adam Lindsay Gordon wrestles with this very idea.

2:22Failure, disillusionment, the impossibility of it all. Vain dreams, for our fathers cherished, high hopes in the days that were. All these men wondered and perished. No better than these we fare, and our due at least is their due. They fought against the odds and fell. He's alluding to the old military idea of soldiers being sent on a tragic, dangerous mission. yet they proceed anyway because that's the job, because that's the nature of being a soldier. It's the nature of being a stoic too. We may not win. Our mission might be impossible. The bad guys might get away with it. But that's not going to stop us from doing what we're supposed to do, from being who we are supposed to be.

3:10The odds do not deter us, and neither do the difficulties. Life itself is a doomed mission. We are all going to die. We are all going to be forgotten. Should we do nothing and write it all off as meaningless then? No, we advance. Because in the end, the end is the same. So in the meantime, we might as well do our duty. We might as well do what's right.

3:49Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like The Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of The Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free.

4:37No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.