How To Astonish and Inspire For Centuries | What's in Your Way Is The Way

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1:29Welcome 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.

2:08How to astonish and inspire for centuries. In Walter Isaacson's wonderful biography of Leonardo da Vinci, he spends a lot of time dissecting and exploring the ideas in da Vinci's notebooks. As Isaacson observed of da Vinci's lifelong habit of journaling, 500 years later, Leonardo's notebooks are around to astonish and inspire us. 50 years from now, he says, our own notebooks, if we work up the initiative to start them, will be around to astonish and inspire our grandchildren, unlike our tweets and Facebook posts. Paper, Isaacson said, is one of the best technologies ever invented. Marcus Aurelius's paper journals survive to us today and remain best read in print.

2:57Much of what was in those journals was influenced by the handwritten notes that Rusticus took while sitting in and listening to the lectures of Epictetus. The simple letters that Seneca penned by hand to a friend also endure. And it's remarkable that the contents of these enduring pieces of paper would fill the journals and commonplace books and published works of writers over the centuries, and will continue to for centuries more to come. Stop wasting your time tweeting and texting and Snapchatting, or at least steal some of that time to produce your own notebooks. Create something that if the centuries aren't astonished and inspired by, at least your family will be.

3:38As Isaacson said again, they'll be around for 50 years for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Take his advice, get a notebook and start writing. Here, let me grab it off the shelf here. This is my Daily Stoic journal wrapped in the new Daily Stoic journal leather cover. It says make time on the front. Then in the back, it has Epictetus. Every day and night, keep thoughts like these at hand. Write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them. I think it's really awesome. We use this great tannery in Red Wing, Minnesota. They've been making leather goods for 150 years. It fits the Daily Stoic Journal exclusively in the US and the UK edition.

4:30It's got these embossed stamped logos. The journal swaps out every year, but the cover stays the same. And if you wanna start a journaling habit, you can bundle the cover and the journal itself for a pretty steep discount. It's like 50 % off. It's a limited sale, but you can check it out at store.dailystoic.com, or I'll link to it in today's show notes.

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6:05What's in your way is the way. Obstacles are a fact of life. Even the most powerful and lucky of us are not exempt from this reality. But we have a superpower at our hands through Stoic philosophy in that our purposes, our intentions, our attitudes can adapt to any conditions to find a way forward. The Stoics talk about acting with a reserve clause that allows us to reconsider and set a new course of action if needed. And Marcus Aurelius tells us that any obstacle can actually become raw material for a new purpose. So that's what you should think about today and this week. How might the obstacles you're facing reveal a new path?

6:50And this is from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living. every week we have a sort of a daily meditation. We've got three quotes from Marcus Aurelius along these lines today. While it's true that someone can impede our actions, they can't impede our intentions or our attitudes, which have the power of being conditional and adaptable. For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its actions into a means of achieving it. And that which is the obstacle to action is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way. That's Meditations 520.

7:29Marcus also says in 835, just as nature turns to its own purpose, any obstacle or any opposition sets its place in the destined order and co-ops it so every rational person can convert any obstacle into the raw material for their own purpose. And then Meditations 832. So clearly he thinks about this a lot. He says, you must build up your life action by action and be content if each one achieves its goal as far as possible. And no one can keep you from this. But there will be some external obstacle, perhaps, he says, but no obstacle to acting with justice, self-control, and wisdom. But what if some area of my action is thwarted?

8:11Well, gladly accept the obstacle for what it is and shift your attention to what is given, and another action will immediately take its place, one that better fits the life you are building. And as you know, this is what I built the obstacles the way around, these ideas. But let me read you Gregory Hayes' translation in that same line, 520, because it's obviously been so instrumental to me. And I think Hayes does it quite well also. Let's see here. He says, and it's interesting, he's clearly referring Marcus to a specific kind of obstacle, difficult people. In a sense, people are our proper occupation.

8:52This is Meditations 520. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us, like the sun, wind, or animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions, because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. the impediment to action advances action what stands in the way becomes the way and then let's let's look at the robin waterfield translation of the same line

9:32all right here's 5 20 from one point of view nothing is more proper to me than a human being insofar as it's my job to do people good and tolerate them but insofar as some people threaten in my proper work, I count a human being as just another indifferent, no less than the sun or the wind or a wild animal. These things may impede some of my activities, but they can't impede my impulses or my state of mind because I have powers of reservation and adaptation. The mind can adapt and alter every impediment to action to serve its purpose. Something that might have hindered a task contributes to it instead, and something that was an obstacle on the road helps you on your way.

10:12And then here's Waterfield's note. He says, again, Marcus stresses the independence of the mind and the possibility of seeing the world in a positive light. So it doesn't matter which translation you read, the message is the same. Stuff happens, stuff gets in our way, but it presents us the opportunity to do something different. So in this sense, the obstacle is the way. It's not that, you know, life erects this wall in front of you and the way is through that wall. It's that when the door shuts, a window opens. It's that when you wanted everything to go well and then someone screws it up, now it's a chance to practice patience.

10:52Now it's a chance to practice forgiveness. Now it's a chance to start over. Now it's a chance to extricate yourself from this toxic relationship, whatever it is, right? What Marcus is saying is that everything that happens in life, every obstacle as maddening and frustrating and as painful as they might be, they are opportunities to practice a different virtue, that virtue is always the way, and that nothing stops us from being able to do that. I just love that passage so much. If I had the time, I'd grab the Pierre Hadeau chapter on this very idea, which also helped inspire the obstacles away.

11:29He talks about sort of the art of turning obstacles upside down. To me, this is a central practice in stoicism. It's why I've got it tattooed on my arm. It's why I wrote a book about it. It's why we talk about it so much. This idea of amor fati, we accept, and then we use what's happened to our advantage. That's the essence of stoicism. I hope that inspires you a little bit today. People are our proper occupation. We tolerate them. We put up with them. And all the obstacles they roll into our way, all the problems they cause us, are actually not problems, but opportunities to practice the very virtues of courage, temperance, justice and wisdom.

12:05That's what we're doing here. And by the way, we do have the new leather bound edition of the Obstacles the Way, which comes with the Obstacles the Way challenge coin as well. Really proud of this thing. You can check that out at dailystoke.com slash obstacle leather.

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