All The Stoics Were Kings | Following The Doctor’s Orders

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2:03Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics. with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

2:40All the Stoics were kings. Marcus Aurelius was a true philosopher king, but he wasn't the first or the last among the Stoics. The first emperor, Octavian, studied under Athenodorus and Arius Didymus. Hadrian took classes from Epictetus, and Antoninus was a kind of natural Stoic. But actually all the Stoics were of the same mold. Cleanthes was a manual laborer, but he carried himself like his work mattered, like he mattered. Cato, a man in command of himself, had no desire for the power that Caesar so destructively sought. Epictetus was a slave, but he knew he was freer than most of the men in Nero's court, perhaps even more so than Hadrian.

3:22As Epictetus' teacher, Musonius Rufus, would say, I believe a good king is from the outset and by necessity a philosopher. And the philosopher is from the outset a kingly person. For the Stoics, it didn't matter what one did for a living. It mattered how they did it. Yes, sure, there was the job king, but far more important was being a kingly person. It was conquering the greatest empire, the one that Seneca laid out, command of oneself. self. If we are to aspire to power, this is the type to aspire to. If we want to lead, let us start by leading ourselves. If we want accolades and privileges, let us seek to deserve them rather than to lust after and acquire them.

4:07And by the way, some of the names in today's message, Athena Doris and Cleanthes and Musonius Rufus, maybe that's not as familiar to you as Marcus and Seneca and Epictetus, the so-called big three. But they're actually just as fascinating, and in some cases, better examples of what Stoicism is supposed to be than the more famous ones. And they're actually who I profile in Lives of the Stoics, the art of living from Marcus Aurelius to Zeno, Zeno being the founder of Stoicism, which also might not have totally landed with you. The book came out in 2020, so right at the depths of the pandemic, so maybe it got lost for you, but I really wanted to look at who the Stoics were, what they did, how they lived, where they lived up to the philosophy, where they fell short.

4:48That's what Lives of the Stoics is about. When I sign it, we have signed copies in the Daily Stoic store, I usually write acta non verba, which means deeds, not words, which I think is a really important thing when it comes to Stoicism. How do you practice this stuff? How do you live up to it? That's what the book's about, and I'd love for you to check it out if you haven't already.

5:15Following the doctor's orders. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. Just as we commonly hear people say that the doctor prescribed someone particular riding exercises or ice baths or walking without shoes, we should in the same way that nature prescribes someone to be diseased or disabled or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone's healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 5.8. It is funny, right, to think about in the Roman days, someone being prescribed to walk without shoes or to ride a horse.

6:00Also, I guess, better than being prescribed bleeding. But we'll get to today's meditation. The Stoics were masters at analogies and used them as a tool to help strengthen their reasoning. Here, Marcus Aurelius observes how willingly we will put up with unpleasantness if commanded by the magic words, doctor's orders. The doctor says that you've got to take this nasty medicine and you'll do it. The doctor tells you that you have to start sleeping hanging upside down like a bat. You'll feel silly, but soon enough you'll get to dangling because you think it will make you better. On the other hand, when it comes to external events, we fight like hell.

6:33if anything happens contrary to our plans. But what if, Marcus asked, the doctor had prescribed the exact same thing as a part of our treatment? What if it's as good as taking our medicine? Well, what if? What's so magical about those words the doctor orders is that feel like we don't have a choice. Of course, you don't have to listen to the doctor. I guess some people don't listen to their doctors. You go, oh, well, they know better. They chose this for me. That's what the treatment of this disease sickness is. Who am I to object? I will accept it and I will go along with it because I want to get better.

7:11But then when you're stuck in traffic or a job turns out to be harder than you thought or a relationship turns out to be more difficult than you thought, But you have to do anything that you didn't expect, you didn't want, because you feel like you have a choice of the matter, you don't want to do it. But what if, Marcus is saying, actually, this too is chosen to make you better? And in a sense, that's what the obstacle is the way as a philosophy is really about. It's this idea that these things aren't things we have to do. They're things we get to do, things that were chosen for us. You can see it as some sort of higher power if you want.

7:51You can see it as fate if you want. You can just simply see it as a thing, but that it is something that's going to make you better. In meditations, Mark Cerritos talks about how he goes, it's unfortunate that this happened. And then he catches himself, no, it's fortunate that it happened to me, right? He was saying, oh, no, wait, this was chosen for me. I am right for this. This is right for me. So stop fighting. Stop pushing against the thing and see it as a prescription. See it as part of the process. See it as an assignment you've been given. How will you handle it? Are you going to be a good patient or a bad patient, a good student or a bad student?

8:36This is everything. These things were chosen for you, and all you have to do in turn is choose them back.

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10:06That'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. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for.

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