Don’t Let It Keep Slipping Away | The Philosopher's School Is A Hospital

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

0:14Ryan Holiday: Don't let it keep slipping away. It was not long ago that summer was just beginning. The months loomed before us. Long, warm evenings, the morning before the heat came, time in the pool, trips, beach, picnics, fairs, barbecues, days without school. And then all of a sudden, grocery stores have pumpkins out front. There are leaves on the ground. It's already Labor Day weekend. What happened? When did that happen? As the Taylor Swift lyric goes, August slipped away into a moment in time. Maybe you missed it because you were busy. Maybe you missed it because you were digging yourself out from under what had been a difficult winter and spring.

1:02Ryan Holiday: Maybe you have been worried about something. Maybe you just weren't paying attention. Seneca, writing about people who dread the future or linger on what has already happened, said that they rob themselves of what is in front of them right now. We deprive ourselves, he said, of the ability to enjoy present things. August might be gone, but September is here, or at least what's left of it. Be present for it.

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4:32Ryan Holiday: The philosopher's school is a hospital. Men, the philosopher's lecture hall is a hospital. You shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure but pain, for you aren't well when you enter it. That's from Epictetus' Discourses, and today's little riffing is from The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. From yours truly, Ryan Holiday, my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can pick up a copy of The Daily Stoic anywhere you buy books. And we also have signed copies in The Daily Stoic store and our Leatherbound edition, which I hope you check out. but let's talk about this quote from Epictetus here.

5:12Have you ever been to physical therapy or rehab? No matter what the name implies or however many people you see lying around getting massages, it's not a fun place to be. Turns out that healing hurts. The trained experts know exactly where to exert pressure and what to subject to stress so that they can strengthen where the patient is weak and help stimulate the areas that have atrophied. Stoic philosophy is a lot like that. Some observations and exercises will touch you on your pressure points. It's nothing personal. It's supposed to hurt. And that's how you develop the will to endure and persevere through life's many challenges.

5:49I remember I was in high school and I was always a runner, so I wasn't in bad shape. I was in good shape, but I basically done no strength training ever in my life. And I was snowboarding one winter and I ended up hurting myself in some accident. I took this sort of jump on a back country hill and ended up sort of rolling over on my head and I tweaked a vertebrae in my back or I don't remember, but I ended up going to physical therapy for it. And exactly as I'm saying in this entry, you sort of expect like it's going to be cool massages or rehab or I don't know, some hot tub or something, jets of water working on you.

6:23I got there and they were like, oh, you just need to do a bunch of sit-ups. And that's what I had to do for like several weeks of returning is they basically put me on a regimen of doing sit-ups and other ab work. They were like, the reason your back is hurt is because it's not supported, buttressed enough by muscles in the front. And I was like, well, this sucks, but that's what I had to do. And I feel like life is a lot like that. You know, you go, you want a magical solution. You want someone to do X, Y, or Z for you. You go to a financial planner and you want them to tell you, here's the magical things I can do that will make you more money.

7:00And in fact, they go, here's where you're spending too much money. Here's where you're not being smart enough with your investments. Here's where you're not being patient enough. Do all these things and check in with me in 30 years and you'll be good, right? That's how it is. We want a shortcut and there is no shortcut except for the work. And the work is not usually fun because if it was fun, they wouldn't call it work. They'd call it fun, right? When you read Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or Seneca, you're like, man, I feel attacked. Why'd you have to do me like that, Marcus? Why'd you have to do me like that, Epictetus?

7:37It's because they know. They know where you're sick. And we're all sick and we're all weaker than we should be. We've let muscles atrophy. We were hoping for a shortcut. We were hoping someone would take care of it for us. And they can't. You got to do the work. Probably the first part of the work is accepting where you are not well. So I love this idea of the philosopher's lecture hall as a hospital. And I see this, you know, on the Daily Stoke socials. People are like, you know, why are there not more quotes about love or happiness or fun? Or why is this serious? Why did you have to go and get political?

8:14This isn't supposed to touch you in your happy place all the time. This isn't supposed to tell you what you want to hear. I wouldn't be doing my job if you didn't sometimes feel attacked by what I said, if you didn't disagree sometimes with what I said, if what I said didn't imply something that challenged you or even offended you. So remember that this is supposed to be hard. And it's hard because it's touching you somewhere where you're soft, where you haven't done the work. And hopefully, by feeling that, it'll spur you to get where you need to go. Or at least in dealing with the challenge, you will better understand why you've chosen to do or say the things you've chosen to do.

8:54So with that, talk to you tomorrow.