Don’t Follow His Example (For Once) | Actors In A Play

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. Why choose a Sleep Number smart bed? Can I make my sight softer? Can I make my sight firmer? Can we sleep cooler? Sleep Number does that. Cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your Sleep Number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. It's the final days of our Black Friday sale. Recharge this season with a bundle of cozy, soothing comfort. Now only$17.99 for our C2 mattress and bays, plus free premium delivery.

1:11Prices higher in Alaska and Hawaii. Check it out at a Sleep Number store or sleepnumber.com today.

1:19Welcome 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 in 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.

2:00Don't follow his example for once. Imagine believing in some ideal your whole life. Family has been committed to a vision of your country for generations. Now, you know this country isn't perfect. You know that not everyone agrees with you, but you're confident that when it comes down to it, things will turn out all right. Now, imagine waking up one morning and finding the person that you find most morally reprehensible who stands for everything you stand against, is now in charge. While this might all sound rather contemporary, it's actually the story of Cato the Younger, the ultimate man of principle, the Stoic that all the other Stoics admired.

2:38With an almost radical commitment to virtue, he defended Rome's old ways, the Mos Mayorum, and he led an opposition against Julius Caesar, who was determined to seize ultimate power at all costs. And when Caesar and his followers defeated Cato's side in Rome's civil war, bringing an end to the Republic and the start of Caesar's dictatorship, how did Cato respond? He called for his sword, checked its razor's edge against his finger. Now I am my own master, he said, and then he killed himself in protest, preferring to die rather than submit to what he considered tyranny. Cato's example in life and in death has long stood is a powerful one and inspired not just the other ancient Stoics, but also the founders.

3:24He was pure. He was principled. He was powerful. It's also understandable. He was devastated. All felt lost. He was in danger. He did not want to become a victim of Caesar. Yet in Lives of the Stoics, our profile of Cato, which is largely sympathetic to him, presents an alternative view of his final protest by way of Napoleon, of all people. Napoleon, who once displayed a bust of Cato in his Hall of Heroes notes, the conduct of Cato was applauded by his contemporaries and has been admired by history. But who benefited from his death? Caesar. Who was pleased by it? Caesar. And to who was it a tragedy?

4:04To Rome and his party? No, he killed himself out of spleen and despair, Napoleon says. His death was the weakness of a great soul, the error of a stoic and a blot on his life. Now, Napoleon is not a perfect character himself, much closer to Caesar than anyone. But he's got a point here. What if Cato had stuck around? What did his suicide, literal or metaphorical, actually accomplish? Nothing was the end, for him anyway. And so we should all stick around, metaphorically and literally. Perhaps this election or any major event did not turn out the way you hoped. So doesn't that make you sticking around even more important?

4:47Stay in the fight. Try to make a positive difference, even if your options are limited. Don't give up. Keep doing your job, as we said yesterday. In this regard, don't follow Cato's example. Keep fighting for virtue and the common good. We still need you in the game. In fact, We need you more than ever.

5:40Actors in a Play. This is the November 8th entry in the Daily Stoic. 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. This is one of my favorite quotes from Epictetus. I have asked so many people about it over the years, all the different actors I've had on the podcast. I've asked Matthew McConaughey and Patrick Dempsey. I've asked comedians about it. I just love this quote. He says, remember that you are an actor in a play, playing a character according to the will of the playwright. If it's a short play, then it's short. If it's long, it's long. If he wishes you to play the beggar, play even that role well, just as you would if it were a cripple, a honcho, or an everyday person.

6:18For this is your duty to perform well the character assigned to you. The selection belongs to another. And then as I write in the Daily Stoic, we have to remember that Marcus Rius didn't want to be emperor. He wasn't a politician who sought office. He wasn't a true heir to the throne. As far as we can tell from his letters and from history, what he really wanted to be was a philosopher. But the powerful elite in Rome, including the emperor Hadrian, saw something in him, and they groomed him for power. Marcus Rius was adopted and put in line for the throne because they knew he could handle it. Meanwhile, Epictetus lived much of his life as a slave and was persecuted for his philosophical teachings.

6:57Both did quite a lot with the roles they were assigned. Our station in life can be as random as a roll of the dice. Some of us are born into privilege, others into adversity. Sometimes we're given the opportunities we want, and other times we're given a lucky break, but to us this can all feel like a burden. The Stoics remind us that whatever happens to us today or over the course of our lives, wherever we fall in the intellectual, social, or philosophical spectrum, our job is not to complain or bemoan our flight, but to do the best we can and to fulfill it. Is there room for flexibility and ambition?

7:31Of course, the history of the stage is littered with stories of bit parts that turned into starring roles and indelible characters that were expanded into future adaptations. But this begins with acceptance and understanding and a desire to excel at whatever we have been assigned. I'm heading to London here very shortly. I'm going to be doing those talks. You can come see me on stage, London, Rotterdam, Dublin, and then Vancouver and Toronto. I hope to see you there. You can grab tickets at ryanholiday.net. But the idea is while you're there, while you're on stage, whatever role you have been assigned, and it's not just like your life role.

8:08You know, Mark Sirius is the emperor. Epictetus is this person overcoming incredible adversity. Stockdale is a prisoner of war, but also the little roles. You have this part in front of you. How are you going to act with this stranger? How are you going to act with your kid in this moment? How are you going to act as a person in the great drama that is or was an election, right? How are you going to act in the moment of time that you happen to be in? Are you going to play this role? Are you going to complain and, oh, they don't give me the good parts. Oh, the director has it out for me. Oh, they don't understand how great I am.

8:43No, you have to turn this role, this one in front of you into something. That's the idea. And this is something I'm very fascinated with. I'll link to my interview with Dempsey and McConaughey, because I think this is a really important stoic concept that's worth chasing down. And thinking about it, it can change your frame day to day. I am an actor in a play. I didn't choose the role. I didn't write the lines, but this is my shot and I'm going to turn it into something.

9:17Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com slash email.

9:44Look, 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, no interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for.

10:38And 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.