Bring Love To Every Situation You Face | A New Way To Pray

0:00You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact. GiveWell has spent the last 18 years researching global health and poverty alleviation, and they direct funding to the highest impact opportunities.

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1:13To claim your match, go to givewell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under Podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from the Daily Stoic and you'll get your donation matched. That's givewell.org, code the Daily Stoic to donate or find out more. I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine, which is I take them over to Whole Foods. We get all our groceries for the week. Then we have dinner. It's one of their favorite things to do. It's one of my favorite things to do. And then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it.

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2:14Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

2:55This is The Antidote. On this day 22 years ago, Brian Sweeney was a passenger trapped on hijacked United Airlines flight 175. He knew something was wrong, but he could not have fully understood that he and so many others were about to be murdered in one of the most hateful and deranged acts of terrorism in history. But in those final few short minutes of his life, he managed to leave a beautiful message on his wife's voicemail. Hey, Jules, this is Brian. Listen, on an airplane, it's been hijacked. Things don't go well. It's not looking good. I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to be good.

3:33I'm so happy to be fine. Same to my parents and everybody. I just totally love you, and I'll see you later. Bye, babe. Bye, call you. In book one of Meditations, where Marcus Aurelius catalogs the most important things he learned throughout his life, he said that he learned from a teacher named Sextus to be free of passion, yet full of love. Imagine the terror of that moment. Yet when you hear Brian's voice coming through the phone, there's not a trace of fear. It's free of passion, free of anger, free of despair, free of everything, yet full of love. because everything else has been stripped away, rendered irrelevant and insignificant.

4:16Pure love, Seneca said, careless of all other things, kindles the soul, makes us selfless, it emboldens us, makes us courageous, inspires us to be strong, instills us with purpose. It doesn't always win, as Sweeney's tragic death reminds us, but it is an antidote to terror and cruelty and evil. It is the thing that keeps going, that lives on after us, that brings meaning and comfort, even in the worst of situations. So today, on the anniversary of 9-11, let us, as Marcus Aurelius said and Sweeney was, let us be full of love. Let us tell those we love that we totally love them. Let us bring love to every situation we face.

5:01Indeed, there is almost no situation in which passion helps, but almost every situation is made better when it is full of love.

5:22A new way to pray. We often pray for things we desire and in the process, excuse ourselves from the equation. We're hoping that the heavens will magically gift us with the outcome we want, whether it's for a promotion or a speedy recovery of a loved one. The Stoics would urge you to stop doing this. Marcus Aurelius reminded himself not to present the gods with a list of demands for pleasures or comforts, but instead ask for help not needing those things. In a sense, then he was really asking for inner strength. He was, in a sense, asking himself. So think about all the things you want that you're praying or hoping for, and try turning them around like this.

6:07See what you come up with instead. Try praying differently, Marcus writes in Meditations 940. See what happens. Instead of asking for a way to sleep with her, try asking for a way to stop desiring to sleep with her. Instead of asking for a way to get rid of him, try asking for a way not to crave his demise. Instead of a way not to lose my child, try asking for a way to lose my fear of it. And then Epictetus in Discourses says, we cry to God Almighty, how can we escape this agony? Don't you have hands? Or could it be that God forgot to give you a pair? Sit and pray your nose doesn't run, or rather just wipe your own nose and stop seeking a scapegoat.

6:53And then Epictetus in Discourses 4.1, he says, but I haven't at any time been hindered in my will nor forced against it. How is that possible? I have bound up my choice to act with the will of God. God wills that I be sick, such is my will. He wills that I should choose something, so do I. He wills that I reach for something, or something be given to me, I wish for the same. What God doesn't will, I will not wish for. This idea of blowing your own nose, that's a great expression from Epictetus that I love. I think what the Stoics are talking about here is self-sufficiency. I was just reading a great little biography of Musashi, the samurai swordsman, and I wrote down a line in my commonplace book from him.

7:34He says, you know, he says, worship the gods and Buddha, but do not rely on them, right? He didn't want to go into a sword fight hoping that Buddha would bless him. He trained for it to make that irrelevant, right? He wanted to rely on his sword and his actions. Remember the Stokes talk about what's in our control, what's not in our control. I think what the Stokes are talking about is don't pray for things that are not in your control, that are not up to you. Don't make yourself dependent on getting lucky, on being blessed, on your dreams coming true on everything going right. Focus on having a plan that, as the Stoics say, is indifferent to all that, right?

8:18There's another great line from Epictetus where he says, you know, a student's like, how should I do this? But he says, you're asking me to show you what to do. And he says, wouldn't it be better to ask to be adaptable to all circumstances? And so this is really where we're trying to get, a place where there isn't anything we pray for. I take some pride, you know, every year my wife will go, what do you want for your birthday? And I go, I don't, nothing. I don't want anything. There's nothing I need. There's nothing I want. It's not because I'm a billionaire. It's that I spent more time, you know, just getting the things that I did need, the tools I need for my life or my, you know, my happiness.

8:59And then for the most part, being indifferent to all the other things and not needing to wait for my birthday or Christmas or, you know, a check to come in to be able to afford this thing. It's better to not want it in the first place. And I think this is true for all the kinds of luck or, you know, cool experiences or things that we think we want or need. No, either get it for yourself if it's possible or write it off, you know? I think that's what the third quote, the final quote from Epictetus is saying is like, look, I'll just align my likes with what happens. If God wants me to have it, or the gods want me to have it, or the logos, or whatever.

9:41Stoics obviously had complicated, somewhat contradictory views on religion. But what will be will be. What I get is what I get. I won't throw a fit, right? That's where we're trying to get as Stoics, trying to get to this place of self-sufficiency where we blow our own nose, where we're good, whatever happens. and I wish that for you. It's not easy. It doesn't just happen. You got to work for it. But that's what we're doing here, these meditations. And I hope this helps and I'll talk to you soon.

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