Be Patient With Them | Protect Your Own Good

0:00Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14Be patient with them. When we were kids, life was often overwhelming and bewildering. We would fall asleep in a car seat or a stroller and wake up hours later in a dark room with no idea how we got there. Everything was new. We had to walk into a classroom for the first time, sit at something called the desk and stay there all day, away from our parents, learning from strangers. We were constantly being subjected to rules that no one had explained, told to do things that we didn't understand. But ultimately, adults understand that it's difficult to be a kid, and that's why we're patient with them, why we take our time to explain things to them, why we don't hold their mistakes or their tantrums against them.

0:52But is it really all that different to be an adult? Many of us are still walking into new rooms for the first time. New jobs, new relationships, old relationships with new problems, children of our own to care for, aging parents who now need us in ways they never did before, responsibilities we didn't have yesterday, rules and practices and cultural norms that are constantly changing. In Marcus Aurelius's famous passage about the obnoxious and rude and frustrating people he knows he'll meet in the course of a day, he makes a really important point. He reminds himself and us why people are like this.

1:25They are like this, he says, because they don't know better, because no one taught them. All these things result from their not knowing what is good and what is evil, he writes. And how can I be angry at my kin or even hateful towards them? Everyone is new to this life thing. We're all figuring it out as we go, still reacting, still afraid, still working through lessons we haven't mastered yet. Like a kid, we've never been this age before. Nobody has. So let's be patient. Let's assume the best. Let's help them do better.

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4:33Protect your own good. Musonius Rufus, one of Epictetus' teachers, taught that human beings are all born with an innate goodness, or as he put it, with an inclination to virtue. It's our choices that decide whether that goodness comes out or not. We're not bad people, essentially, though we might sometimes do bad things. The purpose of Stoicism, then, is to remind us of that goodness and to help us work hard to protect it. So spend some time this week writing about the choices you can make, the actions you can take to do just that. And this is from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living, which I use myself every morning.

5:15I love the little prompts. Here is Epictetus' Discourses, who, as you know, Epictetus was Musonius Rufus' student. Protect your own good and all that you do. And as concerns everything else, take what is given as far as you can make reasoned use of it. If you don't, you'll be unlucky, prone to failure, hindered, and stymied. That's Discourses 4.3. And then Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Marcus then influenced by Epictetus. So Musonius teaches Stoicism to Epictetus, whose writings then survive and make their way to Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius, as it happens, is introduced to Stoicism through Junius Rusticus, who loans him his copy of Epictetus.

5:55Dig deep within yourself, Marcus writes in Meditations 759. For there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow. You will keep digging. I guess what the Stoics are doing here is really pushing back on this notion of original sin, that we're toxic, broken, horrible people, that human nature is something to be feared. There is a darkness in us, but there's also incredible good. And I think the Stoics are talking about what side of you are you going to nurture? What side is going to come out? What side are you going to look for? What side are you going to reveal? and Musonius and Epictetus and Marcus are all tested in incredible ways.

6:33Musonius is exiled three times, perhaps four. Epictetus, you know, experiences the incredible injustice of slavery. Marcus Aurelius is given absolute power. And as they say, power reveals, but I think also adversity reveals. And in both Musonius and Epictetus' case, adversity revealed an unbreakable goodness, a commitment, a tenacity, a perseverance, an unswerving belief in these principles that we're talking about now. And in Marcus Aurelius, you know, he wasn't challenged the same way, although life did challenge him with loss and grief and pain and sickness. But it also challenged him with great bounty of good fortune.

7:17And that, too, tested his character. It tested whether there really was goodness inside of him and what side of him he was going to reveal. So as you go out into the world this week, think about who you really are underneath. Think about what kind of character you've been cultivating. And let's show people who we are and who we can be and what we actually believe. As Marcus says, let's not waste time arguing what a good man should be. Let's be one. Let's be the best we can for ourselves, for our family, for our world. And I'll talk to you soon. Hey there, just a heads up. I'm going to be on tour this fall.

7:55You can see me in Australia and New Zealand in October, in August. I'm mixing my months up here. But in August, you can see me in Chicago and Minneapolis and Detroit. Then I'll be on the East Coast sometime in November and December. Anyways, grab tickets to that, dailystoiclive.com. Hope to see you there.