Everyone (And Everything) Is Like A River | Ask DS

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1:49Just 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. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording.

2:31Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

2:41Everyone and everything is like a river. Marcus Aurelius, as we've talked about, is fond of river metaphors. He wrote next to rivers. He talked about rivers. He would have bathed in them while on campaign. He read Heraclitus and would have been familiar with the idea that no man steps in the same river twice because the river is always changing. And so is the man. For the Daily Stoic, my dear partner and friend, Steve Hanselman, translated one of Marcus's river metaphors. This is 523 and meditations like this. Meditate often on the swiftness with which all that exists and is coming into being is

3:31Well, to illustrate that fact, let's look at a meta example, how that passage itself has changed over time. In his 1634 translation, Merrick Casabon has it in the language of the time. All is in flux, being the same then in no other respect than a running river, maintained by the perpetual influx and new supply of waters, is the same. That, therefore, which thou hast since received, not that which came from thy mother, is that which comes to change. The 19th century British translator George Long has it like this. Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear, both the things which are and the things which are produced.

4:17For substance is like a river in a continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite varieties, and there is hardly anything which stands still. In the Iter Citadel, the great Pierre Hadeau, you should read that book too, translates the passage like this. Think often about the rapidity with which beings and events pass and disappear. For substance is like a river in perpetual flux. Activities are in constant transformation, and causes are in a myriad of modes. Almost nothing is stable, even that which is close to you. Think also of the infinite abyss of the past and of the future, into which everything is swallowed up.

5:03And then in my favorite translation, you can grab our special leather edition in the show notes or at steward at dailystoke.com. Gregory Hayes has it as follows. Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone, those that are now and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river. The what is in constant flux. The why has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. And then most recently in his annotated edition, which came out in 2021, Robin Waterfield put it like this. Remind yourself at frequent intervals how quickly things and events are carried past and swept away.

5:45Reality is like an endlessly flowing river, its activities constantly changing, its causes variable beyond counting. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that nothing is stable, even what is close to us in time. Marcus Aurelius put those words down in Greek over 1850 years ago. They have not changed. But each time a new translator has looked at them, they've found something different. The passage has changed like a river, never remaining stable yet, still maintaining its essence the whole time. And the same is true for each reading and rereading that you yourself do of those words. As you change and your context change, what you discover and get out of a book changes too.

6:33I have my copy of Meditations, which I bought in 2006, the Gregory Hayes one. And every time I read it, I can look at the notes that I took when I was 19 years old, when I was a college sophomore. And I can see what struck me then. I could see what struck me when I read it a different time. I can see when I was reading it with a highlighter, when I was reading it with a pen, when I was reading it with a pencil. when I was reading it while eating something in other cases. And then I have different versions. I've read all the editions we obviously mentioned above, taken different notes. And then when we did the leather edition, when I bought the rights to the Hayes translation and I did the leather edition, which is what I read now because I put so many miles on my old one and it's starting to fall apart.

7:15The river had seen better days, so to speak. But now that new edition I've had for over a year, I guess this is the one year anniversary of that edition. I can now see my evolution with that. And then I couldn't find it the other day. I grabbed another one off the shelf of the painted porch. I started over. And now I'm starting that new process again and again. So meditations is something, as Mark's really says at the beginning, not to be satisfied with just getting the gist of something. You go back to it over and over and over again. You get something new out of it each time. That's what reading and rereading gets you.

7:49That's why you come back to the same reverse. That's why that metaphor is so powerful. You can check out our edition at store.dailystoic.com, where you can get the paperback of the Gregory Hayes or the Robin Waterfeld at the Painted Porch. I'll link to both of those.

8:10hey it's ryan welcome to another episode of the daily stoke podcast on thursdays i try to answer some of your questions or rather i try to answer some questions and i thought it was fitting having just put out the justice book you know when we think of justice unfortunately as i talk about this in the intro of the book we think of the justice system we think the justice department That's not really what the stoic idea of justice is, but it's not irrelevant there. And so back in March of 22, I did a virtual chat to a group of FBI agents. It was a strength and leadership retreat about 30 FBI agents were doing.

8:47And they asked me a bunch of questions. And I want to bring that to you. I'm going to bleep out their names. Obviously, it's not important to the questions. It was really cool to chat with them. And hopefully some of these questions will strike you, whatever you do. And hopefully it can help you make the world a better place, help you bring order to chaos, help you do your duty, right? Live up to the responsibilities of your office and talent and potential, whatever those happen to be. I'm splitting this Q &A because it was pretty long into two parts. So you can check out the earlier part. I'll link to that in today's show notes.

9:22But here's me talking about some of the sacrifices that leadership requires, how we balance motivation and stoicism, how we try to plan for the future while still being present, and then that perennial question of work-life balance plus some other stuff. Thanks to the FBI folks for having me out. March 2nd, 2022 seems like forever ago, but I'll just get into it.

9:52Yes, leadership requires some sacrifice, right? It's going to require your time and your effort. But maybe part of that is accepting that there will be, as a leader, more obstacles in front of you. And do you look at them as a problem or a challenge that you can overcome and be stronger from? I've always thought that phrase, does leadership equal sacrifice or am I looking at it the wrong way? I don't know. I think it obviously does require sacrifice. That's what they pay you for, right? If it was the same as what everyone else was doing, it wouldn't be a distinction. I do think like the job of the leader is to to do the things that other people can't do.

10:30Right. So like if you think about like you're doing the things that other people can't do. And it's particularly, you know, we talked about the difficult conversations, like the easy conversations, the easy decisions. Those are going to make their way up the chain to you. Right. People are going to do that stuff just like the perks and the fun stuff they want to get to. Right. So the idea, I think, realizing that leadership is a sacrifice, if only in the sense that you get all the tough problems, you get all the complicated decisions, you get all the non-clear-cut stuff. That's what they pay you for.

11:06Everyone else is chipping away at the easy stuff before it gets to your desk. And so just understanding that, hey, look, this is what I'm here for. I'm here to make the unpopular decisions. I'm here to have the unpleasant conversations. I'm here to think about the things that other people don't want to think about. I'm here to institute the policies or procedures or the training that if left to their own devices, other people wouldn't do. But that's why somebody empowered me with the responsibility and the authority to mandate that or to set that agenda. Because if I don't do it, it won't get done.

11:46and that that is that that is the sacrifice it's not always fun just one additional thought i had you might comment a little bit on on the concept of motivation sure the reason i bring that up is because just in looking at stoicism and sort of this focus on the now and sort of the idea that we could die at any time i definitely think including people who approach midlife right i don't think it's unnatural to then start to question what you're you know what you're focusing your time and i think in certain ways that can be a little bit demotivating and i have some ideas that i've explored over the last year or so about how to maintain motivation or how to do that but i'm curious to see kind of what your thoughts are on that because i do think there is that risk right sure truth is if you're at home with your kids and you're like this is really what i care about the most this is the thing that brings me the most joy let's say or the most like i feel the most connected to that it sort of can follow that like some other areas you're like them value a little differently.

12:43And then you kind of wrestle with that. Well, when I think about memento mori, I think I said, you know, Marx, he realized this quote, that you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say anything. He's not saying you will die right now. Let that determine what you do and say anything. It's not, hey, an asteroid is coming. Let's all go try heroin and, you know, have an orgy or something, Right. It's that death is always there. And so the idea of deferring things too far off in the future is both naive and arrogant. So I think about trying to be present, but also understanding that if if all you focus on is the present moment, it doesn't much prepare you for the next present moment if you're you're lucky to get there.

13:28So I think some people are like, I'm going to be miserable for the next 40 years, but then I'm going to retire and live in Miami or something, right? Well, what if you don't get there, right? Then that's a pretty bad bargain. But of course, we all know the people that are sort of perpetually caught off guard, unprepared for tomorrow because they didn't take any preparations today. So I do think it's a tension. It's a balance. I guess the way I think about it, let's say as a writer, I don't think like, okay, I'm going to be really miserable for the next couple years. And then after I finish publishing this book, then I'll have fun with my kids.

14:03I try to think about what we're talking about earlier, having a balance. So I'm working on my book because it's important to me. I'm doing my job. It's important to me. I think it matters. I think it makes a difference. but how can I integrate it into my life so that day to day, I feel like I left nothing undone, but I also neglected nothing at the same time. So like Seneca says that we balance the books of life each day. So again, instead of deferring, instead of hoping in the future, we'll get to it being miserable. Now we try to have a good balance that like, I want to have a fully complete day, right?

14:38Wrap it up. I want to do all the things that I'm, I think about my life as designing a good day, design it around a good day. And if I can do that, then however many days I get, I've lived that life properly as opposed to being unbalanced or out of whack or deferring. Does that sort of make sense? Like I try to be working on my stuff each day, have time for family stillness etc and get to a place where what i'm really just locked into is the process the day-to-dayness of it as opposed to maybe being uh so results oriented and obviously results in your line of work matter if my books don't sell i don't get to keep writing them i'm not saying that that that isn't i'm just saying that what we control is what we put in each day right did we show up did we follow did we do what we were supposed to do did we give our best etc.

15:31That's what we control. We don't control, you know, whether we're necessarily recognized for that, appreciated for that, whether it pays off in the short term or not. You know, just think about someone who's like, hey, my whole life was built around becoming a number one New York Times bestselling author, winning the Super Bowl or becoming director of this or that. Well, one, you don't know if you're going to get it. And then two, when you talk to those people that actually get those things, you know, it tends to not be the magical panacea transformational experience that they thought it was going to be.

16:07Yeah, that seems pretty consistent with some of the things that I've been thinking about as well. I guess it seems like a very young man's game to get in there and think that if I put in every ounce of my energy and attention into this task, that I'm going to have a major impact on the world or on the thing I'm doing. I think the older you get, the more you realize that it's not necessarily always the case that you having put every minute of your life into something is going to necessarily have a major impact. One thing that I've found is that it's caused me to shift my focus a bit towards people in the sense that my day, my satisfaction, how I consider what's good and what's bad and the outcomes at my job have more to do now with the employees that I work for or that I'm supervising, whether or not they're getting what they need in terms of satisfaction in their job and whether or not I'm making their lives better or not, right?

16:58So for me, that's helped a lot because, you know, while I believe in the mission and the violations we go after, and there's a lot of good work we do, I also find that to me, if I put that second to the employees and the folks that I'm working with to include my own family, then I feel a little bit more satisfied about the outcomes of my day today. Anyway, it's just a thought. No, no, I think that's a brilliant thought. There's a really good book I read recently. I just interviewed him on the podcast, but Arthur Brooks' new book, From Strength to Strength. One, he talks about the idea of the professional decline, which he says is coming sooner than you think, right?

17:32We think we're going to get better and better, even though we watch athletes peak and then peter out. That happens to all of us in all careers. But the point, I think your point is a well-made one that if you focus on results or you focus on recognition, you know, you know, you're probably going to be disappointed. But if you focus on having an impact on the people around you, a positive impact on the people around you, which, by the way, I think includes your family, right? Who would consider it a success to win in every way at our career and then realize that that came at the expense of our family?

18:10You know, if you want to talk about where you're going to have the most impact, it's going to be at home and it's going to be on the people that you spend the most time with day to day. So yeah, if you're thinking about your impact on the future of this or on the public at large, you're probably getting a little grandiose. And the cost of that is you're ignoring what you could do for the person that you pass in the hallway six times a day.

18:38Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.