BONUS: Celebrate Earth Day The Stoic Way | Living In Accordance With Nature

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0:55Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a bonus episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It is Earth Day here. I'm not saying I live in Austin for Barton Springs, But it's certainly one of the reasons I have stayed in Austin. I swim there a couple times a week now that I take my son to school in Austin most days. And it's just one of my absolute favorite places. Actually, when I was in Australia last summer, I guess their winter, to get my talks, I sort of riffed on why I love Barton Springs so much. I love to swim. It's one of my hobbies. It's one of my favorite things to do. I swim pretty often where I live in Austin, Texas, in this place called Barton Springs, which is one of the wonders of the earth, in my opinion.

1:38And it's this natural spring, something like 30 million gallons of water comes up from deep under the earth every single day. It's exactly 71 degrees Fahrenheit. It doesn't matter if it's snowing outside. It doesn't matter if it's 110 degrees out, which it probably is now. It's always 71 degrees. And I like to swim, and there's fish and turtles and plants. It's endangered species. It's this incredible oasis that people have been coming to for literally thousands of years. And I was thinking of the beauty of Barton Springs, and then I was swimming in icebergs yesterday and watching the waves crash over into the pool.

2:15And I remember thinking the whole world is a temple of the gods. I couldn't swim in icebergs today. The waves were too high. So I had to just settle for sitting on the third story and just watching these enormous waves crash over, some of the biggest waves I've ever seen in my life. The whole world is a temple of the gods. And I would say Australia is a temple of temples. You're all very lucky to live here. And I'm excited to be here talking with all of you. And one of the other things I love about it, though, is I love that it exists. Like not the natural wonder of it, but I love that at some point the people in this state got together and preserved it.

2:52Right. And then continue to preserve it. See, Barton Springs is home of this endangered species called the Barton Springs salamander. So the whole thing is is this like federally protected habitat. There's another amazing one out in the middle of Texas called Balmore. that's got this species of Comanche pupfish that's the only place that it exists in the world. So by preserving it, not only does everyone get to enjoy it, but it's also, by definition, preserving a species that wouldn't be able to exist anywhere else. And I just love that. I love that human beings came together and solved the collective action problem, preserved something for future generations.

3:30Just anytime there's a national park or a National Monument or just thinking in Australia. We went out to the Blue Mountains. We went to their parks. You just go, a group of people got together, solved the political problem, and made a thing that now generations later we're enjoying. People from all over the world. I love that. That's to me what Earth Day is about. A reminder that this doesn't just happen. We have to do work. And that if we don't do that work, if we leave it to someone else, it might not happen. And then we are robbing our children and grandchildren and their children. We are robbing other people of that.

4:09That clip from my Australia talk, I was saying that the whole world is a temple of the gods. We pay our respects to that temple by protecting and preserving. And that's what Earth Day is about. And so for this bonus episode, I wanted to riff on that idea. Here are some stoic secrets to living in accordance with nature, or rather some stoic ideas on protecting, preserving, enjoying, and philosophically relating to this natural world that we are lucky enough to live in and obligated to protect and preserve. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Basko County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck.

5:03What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids, who I drove home from the hospital in that truck.

5:45Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. Look, when you're hiring, you don't want just anyone.

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7:49need. One phrase you hear pop up in the Stoic writings quite a bit is this idea of living in accordance with nature. All the Stoics talk about it. You know, one thing they didn't do is define that particularly well. Did they mean human nature? Did they mean outside nature? Did they mean some sort of metaphysical nature? Probably some combination of all of the above. But I want to talk about one of those which is most interesting and I think most accessible to us. The idea of living in and with nature. That's one thing you see abounding in the Stoic writings. Marcus Aurelius is writing beautifully about the way that stocks of grain bend over low under their own weight.

8:27He talks about animals, the way there's flecks of foam on the boar's mouth. Seneca writes a whole series of books on natural questions, on sort of what we would today call biology and anthropology. So the Stoics were definitely fascinated with this, and they weren't your sort of classroom-bound bookish philosophers. They were people who got outside in the world. And that's what I try to do. I'm Ryan Holiday. I've written a number of books about Stoic philosophy. Of course, this is my life. This is what I get excited about. But I also live on a little ranch outside Austin, Texas, where I try to spend a good chunk of my time.

8:59I try to do things outside every day. I try to be out in nature because it makes me happy. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. Some stoic strategies to live in nature, to appreciate nature, and get happiness and joy from nature.

9:16Nothing makes me happier, for instance, than going to see my two donkeys. I have Buddy and Sugar. That's them right there. So Buddy I bought on Craigslist for$100. Maybe the single best purchase and investment I've ever made. and then the sugar we got her for I think$300 on Craigslist and they're just the sweetest hey

9:42sugar is much moodier than buddy I'd say buddy's a bit of a sex pest if I'm being perfectly honest but he's a nice boy I think one thing I realized one time I walked over and I was just sort of watching buddy he's just standing there for like hours and hours I realized he's not comparing himself to anyone, right? He's not wondering if he's adequate or not. He's just alive, right? He's just still, right? You know that expression, human being, not human doing, but he doesn't wrestle with that at all. He's just present. Look at him. When I go out and I see the animals, when I spend time with them, it calms me down, makes me happier, makes me more grateful, makes me more present.

10:21Then I can bring that energy back towards my regular life, toward my job, towards the world that is not calm and chill like they are. And, you know, there's something about animal energy. This is why they do equine therapy, for instance. Just being around the animals, feeling them, having to adjust your mood, having to read their mood. There's something very special and powerful about that. And so, yeah, he was$100. And he's kind of a lot of work sometimes. Not really. He's pretty low maintenance. But he pays us back in many, many ways. mostly just being alive and being a good example. And one time you fought off a mountain line didn't you buddy?

10:59Remember? You still have some scars. It was... Buddy where's your scar? Somewhere around here. His neck was all bit up. That's what they do. They're livestock guarding animals. Their job is just to sort of be around. They keep the cows company and they keep bad stuff away. That's what Buddy does. and then Sugar gets us a baby every once in a while. Buddy and Sugar have a baby every year or so about 13 months and we name it Booger and then we we spread the love and we share it with friends. Let's see if Sugar let me pet her today. She's kind of grouchy.

11:38Sugar you got something on you.

11:49Sugar is a little smaller than Buddy.

11:59And then we've got this little lake here, which sometimes we go fishing in. Hunting and fishing, as far as hobbies go, teaches all sorts of amazing philosophical lessons. Patience, of course. Ingenuity, of course. Silence, of course. And then, you know, some certain resiliency, a certain gratitude for the gifts of nature. And then, you know, you got to learn these skills, right? Fishing is a skill. Hunting is a skill. Cleaning a fish or a deer or a hog is, it's gross, but it's a skill. And then from that skill, you get certain benefits, right? And that's what life is. I think one of the things I've had to learn when I go hunting, especially, I talked to Peter Atiyah about this on the podcast.

12:46I'll show you a chunk of that. One of the experiences I find when I'm hunting is, so first off, you have this sort of awareness. And then when you see the thing that you are looking for, you get that rush, that flood of emotion, the recognition, the practice of having to calm down the adrenaline dump because you know it's not going to be productive. To me, I get the most out of hunting just in the unusual practice or the building of that muscle, which I feel like you don't get to so consciously do in the rest of your life. Yeah, I think that's an amazing experience that you're right. There's no comparison to that in regular life.

13:27All of the best laid plans can go right out the window in the fog of war. And in archery, especially, this is a much bigger issue. So I only hunt with a bow and arrow. In archery, the goal is obviously for the most rapid and humane exploration of the animal. So therefore you want to be as close as possible so that the risk of a subpar shot is gone. Well, anybody who's hunted elk knows that when you're 50 yards or less from an elk during the rut. I mean, you can smell it. You can feel it spit hitting you at times. By the way, if it gets really angry, it'll charge you and it will destroy you. It could impale you.

14:07You now have to be able to calm yourself down to do something that is very technically hard, which is shoot a bow and arrow. I worked with this guy named Joel Turner, who's I think one of the masters of teaching the process of the perfect shot. And you've probably heard of like target panic, right? Target panic is a real issue in anything, but boy, especially in archery. How do you get out of target panic? Well, it turns out you have to shift your focus from the aim to the process of the shot, and you have to turn it into something called a closed loop process as opposed to an open loop. So an open loop process is something that you do without thinking that can't be stopped mid-process.

14:53Whereas something that is closed loop, everything you're doing is being done slowly enough that you can stop at any moment. And your only capacity is to focus on that thing. You can't be thinking about anything else. Now that's not an easy thing to do. That in and of itself is a remarkable skill. But once you have that skill, all of a sudden, even when an elk is screaming and, you know, it's just total chaos in the midst of wherever you are, you can sort of focus on the process and not the aiming, which is the thing that you would, by the process, I mean the shot process. Having to calm yourself down, having to understand that your racing heart rate here is not your friend, that your emotions here are not necessarily your friend.

15:43And to calm yourself down and to be in command of oneself to do this thing that you have to do. Obviously, people who fight in wars or respond to real crises or experience this in a real way. But hobbies that challenge us in that way are really good. Plus, they get us outside. There's this great passage from Theodore Roosevelt where he goes out. he goes out, he spends all days in the rain, whatever. He ends up getting what he wanted, which he says is a reward. He says, but if one actually needed a reward, because the reward was doing all the stuff, right? I think that's one of the things you learn when you go hunting is you have to detach from the results a little bit.

16:21You have to actually experience the process. Hey, buddy. You have to experience the process. You have to be present for it. You just have to understand that, you know, you can do everything you want to do right, but then you also just have to turn yourself over to the gods, so to speak, right? How's the weather that day? What are the animals doing that day? There's a certain acceptance, the art of acquiescence, as Epictetus calls it, so you practice that too. So I think hobbies that get you out and challenge you, there's a reason Marcus Aurelius goes hunting, there's a reason hunting metaphors abound in the ancient world because they obviously had a different food system than us.

16:59They didn't have the luxury of just magically getting everything from the supermarket. They had to learn how to do things. They had to understand where their food came from. And so do we.

17:14Lusonius Rufus has a whole essay on how farming is the profession best suited to philosophy. I don't know exactly what he means. I think he's saying that, you know, cultivation, right? I think he's saying that patience. I think he's talking about hard work and dedication. I think he's talking about being outside. You know, it's a profession unlike, I don't know, something more exploitative, something more manipulative, right? It's something that forces one to play by certain rules. Isn't quite as virtuous a profession. I don't exactly farm stuff, but I would say that, you know, getting this place, what it's forced us to do is learn a bunch of skills we wouldn't have otherwise learned, to understand the world in ways that we probably otherwise wouldn't have had to do.

17:58There's so many moments when we wanted to give up, when we wanted to go back towards an easier life, when we wanted to live like everyone else. You know, it makes you responsible, right? We're responsible for these guys. We're responsible for the chickens. We're responsible for keeping everyone safe, for taking care of them, for making sure that they're fed. These are all, I think, great traits that challenge you, that force you to grow up, force you to be responsible, but you get a lot out of it in exchange, which of course is the essence of what the Stokes are talking about. Maybe that's what Hussonius Rufus meant when he said that farming is the only profession that a philosopher should embark on.

18:39One of the things about being outside, being in nature, especially being out in the country, is it's quieter and it forces you to be present, to observe. It calms you down. Like I'm just noticing the different prints that I'm seeing here. I saw some raccoon prints a few minutes ago. You got to be on the lookout for snakes. The donkeys were walking behind me earlier. I don't want them to sneak up on me. You're just always noticing, right? I think that's a beautiful part of meditations. You see that Marcus Arias had cultivated kind of the poet or the artist's eye. He's noticing these little things.

19:10He says, you know, the flecks of foam on the boar's mouth. He says the furrowed brow of the lion. He's cultivated a kind of presence. Winston Churchill, who falls in love with painting at middle age, right? One of the things it does is gets him outside into nature in a way that as a very ambitious, busy, sort of worldly guy, he wasn't doing, right? You look at Winston Churchill and you go, yeah, this isn't a guy who's going for long runs or bike rides, but getting out in a field and painting, watching a sunset, you know, observing a flower, it forces him to slow down, to notice and be present.

19:45Like right now where I am, It's not the most beautiful, right? All the leaves have fallen. We're still dealing with a bit of a drought in Texas, although we finally got some serious rain last week. The more I live here, the more I spend time, I find beauty in all the different seasons if I look for it, right? If I try to be observant and notice and find, oh, that's cool, I didn't see that before. I've lived here now for going on 10 years, and, you know, even though I've walked every inch of this, I find things that I miss the whole time, or I find something that washed up, or I find something new that's happened, right?

20:16And that's one of the things you're doing. You're walking around, you're checking the fences, you're just monitoring what's going on. You're present. It's not work, but being responsible for all this. You have to be aware as you cultivate land or piece of property or a place on earth. It's also cultivating in you a kind of presence and awareness. And I found that to be immensely beneficial.

20:41If you want some semblance of the cycle of life and death, on the farm. These are some bones of a cow I had to put down. I think this is a deer boar or something. But like, look, just walking as I'm walking back to the fence. I'll show you.

21:04This is, you know, I think a leg bone from one of the cows and then the dogs were grabbing it and playing with it. That's just how it goes. So anyways, there's a certain stillness to being around it but there's also this kind of sobering reminder of of memento mori same thing will happen to us eventually right you know we're not that different than even even than a cow hopefully nobody will eat us but what do we care we'll be dead let me show you the goats too that's turtle that's bucket that's watermelon turtle is from brent from cerro gordo he had her here in austin He was actually kidnapped and then he came back and then Brent couldn't drive her all the way out to California.

21:47So he lives with us now. This is Watermelon. We rescued him. Bucket is our first goat. We had another goat that we really loved named Biscuit. And we'd been here maybe two years. Biscuit got out, went over to our neighbors, escaped, and got impregnated. Came back, had babies, you know, a while later. And we called the neighbor and he had more experience with goats. He said, could you help us? Unfortunately, she died in childbirth. They were huge casts. I think one of them was stillborn, this whole thing. And we were really sad. We go to the point about there being life and death. We were really sad about it.

22:26And then as our neighbor was helping us clean up, he was consoling us. And then he said, hey, can I have the babies and the goat that it all died? And we said, why? And he's like, I'm gonna barbecue them and feed them to my dog. And you're just like, whoa, this is a different life, man. but it's that point of like, you know, you think you're special, but you know, someone will eat you when you die if you're not careful. I think the idea is that you can see stoicism anywhere and everywhere, and that's in fact in life that we should look for these lessons. That's what I do. That's why I love living out here.

23:00You can see the philosophical lessons not just in the pages of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, but in a cow, in a goat, in a painful experience, in a goose going missing. and these are the ways that the words sort of you read about them and then you have to experience them in some way living out here in the country has been a constant reminder of that some very happy fun days like today when we get a new calf some sad days when we have to bury something or put something down or lose it or sell it but such is life such as stoicism i'll see you soon

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