In a World Gone Shallow, In a World Gone Lean | A Simple Way To Measure Our Days

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

0:56In a world gone shallow, in a world gone lean, it must have been lonely. Here he was, a lover of poetry and philosophy, of truth and goodness, and what was he surrounded by? by people who loved violence and splendor, fame and money, by people who lusted, who wanted to conquer, who needed to be constantly entertained. There is a weariness to Marcus Aurelius' meditations because the world wearied him. He writes of the emptiness of bustling processions, the cruelty of the Colosseum, the superficiality of things people chased and coveted. Like us, Marcus Aurelius lived in the real world, not Plato's Republic, as he reminded himself.

1:38He was surrounded by shallow people, people who missed the point, people who, lacking meaning, distracted themselves with pleasure. And yet, he worked hard not to let this weariness wear on him, not to let him make him angry and mean, or to give in to the temptations of the mob. He got outside, he got up early while the day was still fresh and young, and Rome seemed fresh and pure. He immersed himself in nature, he cultivated simplicity, not the superficial kind, but the kind rooted in first principles. Confersed with the ancients, he cherished great art. He was a towering example of greatness and leadership and wisdom.

2:16As frustrating and disappointed as he sometimes got, he tried not to give up on people, or let them, as he wrote, implicate him in their ugliness. And today, in our own imperial but decaying world, we must follow these same practices. Shallowness and cruelty and stupidity may be rampant, but we must resist it, resist it without bitterness or despair, by being bright lights in a dark time. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is not meant to be another book on your shelf, but a constant companion in your own education, your own effort to resist the shallowness and chaos of modern life. That's what I think when I hold our leather edition, or if you've ever seen me in the pockets, I reach behind me, I grab it off the shelf.

3:03Something about it, right? You're doing what Marcus did, stepping away from the noise, connecting to timeless wisdom, fortifying yourself for the day ahead. It sits on my nightstand for a reason. When it's been a long day and I want to enter a different world, that's the book I reach for. The idea is, you know, not just the content, but the weight of the leather, the quality of the pages, the craftsmanship. These weren't like aesthetic choices we made when we took the Hayes translation and made this edition. They were supposed to be a deliberate counter to our disposable culture. Supposed to remind you that there are some things worth investing in, worth returning to, worth building your life around.

3:42I think Meditations is a book that will make you more patient with difficult people, more resilient in challenging times, more present with those you love. And it's a book that will help you become the bright light that Marcus challenges us to be. If you want to grab our edition, you can just go to dailystoic.com slash leather or just check out the Daily Stoic store. I'll link to that in today's show notes. It makes a great gift for the holidays and it stands up well. My paperback copy having fallen apart over the years and it means so much to me. That's not the copy I reach for anymore. I grabbed one of these leather ones and I think you'll really like it.

4:17Dailystoic.com slash leather. Check it out.

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7:06A simple way to measure our days. This is the December 15th entry in the Daily Stoic. This is the mark of perfection of character, Mark Cirelli says in Meditation 769. to spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending. The Stoics didn't think that we could be perfect. The idea of becoming a sage, the highest aspiration of a philosopher, it wasn't realistic. This was just their platonic ideal. Still, they started every day trying to get a little closer to that mark. There was so much to gain in the trying. Can you actually live today as if it were your last?

7:48Is it even possible to embody completeness or perfection in our ethos, our character, effortlessly doing the right thing for a full 24 hours? Is it possible to do it for even a minute? Maybe not. But if trying was enough for the Stoics, it should be enough for us too. And I think as we get older, as we go through life, we should get better at this. Better at not wasting our time. Better at not taking it for granted. Better at rejecting the busyness or the chaos, the laziness and the procrastination. Ceasing to pretend or try to impress other people or other things that don't matter. but being content and contained within ourselves, concentrating like a Roman, as Marcus really says in meditations, right?

8:41Facing the day with responsibility and poise and dignity and self-control, doing what has to be done, doing it well, right? Doing the things, right, that have to be done, but not the things that don't have to be done. focusing, living, loving, living each day, not just as if it was your last, but as a complete day, as a representation of the person that you want to be, that you aspire to be. And I look back on my days of my 20s, I see I wasn't as good as it as I am now. I look back at my teenager, I was even more ridiculous. You know, I feel like I'm getting better at it. That's what progress is.

9:29It's not perfection of character that we're after, right? But it is about perfecting, right? Improving, making strides in our character. That's what we're after. That's what we're doing here. And the fact that we don't have that long should put an exclamation point on all of it. It should hang over it like the sword of Damocles. Put it in perspective. let you know that you can't waste a minute of it. That's what we're meditating on in this final month of the Daily Stoic. I don't think anyone can be perfect, but we can get better. We can be a little less frenzied, a little less lazy, have a little less pretending.

10:13We can be more in line with the ephemerality of life, do the things that really matter. Let's measure who we are this upcoming year by how unfrenzied we are, how diligent we are, that is to say, not lazy, how little pretending we do. And do we spend each of those days as if we were fully aware of how unpredictable and non-guaranteed the future happens to be?

10:43Hey, 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 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.

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