In The Midst of Life We Are In Death | Practice Love

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1:04Welcome 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.

1:43In the midst of life, we are in death. Death comes for us all. We know this, however much we might deny it. Even if we believe in the science of radical life extension, and we had Peter Attia on the podcast not too long ago, even if we feel young and healthy and invincible, most of us understand that someday we will die. Memento mori. We know that we are mortal. Yet, even in this view, death sits there, off in the future, something we obviously don't want to happen, but not exactly something we think about every day. it is a thought for later, something to get serious about later, when it gets around to making its presence felt.

2:27But this is precisely wrong, Seneca tells us. Death is not something that happens to us once, that we are moving towards each at our own pace. Instead, he says, death is happening right now, not just to other people, to people we love, to people who themselves thought they were healthy and invincible, but to us, we are dying every day, he says. The time that passes belongs to death. So we must understand this. Once a second is spent, it is gone forever. As we kill time, time kills us slowly, inevitably, irrevocably. In the midst of life, we are in death. Indeed, life is cumulative death until we run out.

3:15So we must guard our time accordingly and live our lives accordingly. And obviously, Halloween is a fun holiday where we all get together and our kids get candy and we hang up some skeletons or wonder about ghosts. But in reality, death is all around us. That's what this idea of memento mori is about. I carry a memento mori coin in my pocket. You may have seen me in talks. I wear that memento mori ring that we make with Daily Stoic. And on the back, it says you could leave life right now. The idea, Mark Cerulli says, is you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

3:55This is a core Stoic practice. We've got some cool reminders. If you want one, you can check that out at store.dailystoic.com. I will share that with you. Happy Halloween, obviously. But let's take a deeper, more philosophical message from this holiday. We're going to be talking about it a lot here in October. So I hope the message gets through.

4:23Practice love. This is this week's meditation from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living. There is no audio book of this journal, so the weekly podcast episode is the only way to hear this sort of weekly meditation that we do inside the journal. The stoic notion of sympathia that we are all part of an organic whole connected by mutual interests and affinities is greater than the golden rule. Don't treat others how you would like to be treated. Treat them like you would treat yourself because we are all one. Seneca said that whenever he encountered another human being, he saw an opportunity for kindness.

5:03And he learned from Hakato of Rhodes that if you want to be loved, there's only one thing you can do, love others. Who can you give love to this week? What kindness can you expend? How can you show how you feel to strangers, to friends and family? And how can you show them that you actually believe we are all part of the same whole? You know, I talk about this a little bit in Stillness is the key in the all is one chapter of stillness is the key there's a quote i like from seneca says all that you behold that which comprises both god and man is one we are all part of one great body and there's this quote i love from edgar mitchell the astronaut who was up in space looking down at the earth and he says that he felt an instant global consciousness of people orientation and an intense dissatisfaction, the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.

5:56So this idea that we are all one, this sympathia idea to me, is the essence of stoicism. Stoicism isn't to make you an island to disconnect you from other people. Quite the contrary, as Seneca says, it's to make you kinder and more connected to other people. And Seneca, the three quotes we have today, one is Seneca quoting Hikato. He says, I can teach you a love potion made without any drugs, herbs, or special spell. If you would be loved, love. And then in The Happy Life, Seneca says, a benefit should be kept like a buried treasure only to be dug up in necessity. Nature bids us to do well by all.

6:31Wherever there is a human being, we have an opportunity for kindness. And then in Moral Letters 95, he says, nature produced us as a family since we all sprang from the same source and towards the same end. Nature bestowed upon us mutual love and joined us together as friends. I think going out into nature, looking at something majestic, or as Edgar Mitchell did, looking at the earth from a distance, it does give you this sense of our interconnectedness. It makes a lot of the things that we get angry about feel very petty and small and insignificant. Being around your kids does this as well. You see just how sweet and innocent and pure they are.

7:09and it feels weird to carry anger or resentment about anything or anyone, as the Beatles say, and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. What are you putting out in the world? What are you contributing to the whole? How are you remembering that we are all one finger on a large hand or that we're all part of the same body? The more you feel this, the more connected you are to it. Not only will your anger and fear and resentment and anxiety dissipate, but you will do better. You will be better. You will make the world a better place. That's my message for today. Go out and do a kindness.

7:47Go out and do something good. If you want to feel good, do good, as the Stoics say, and I'll leave it there. Sympathia, everyone. We are all part of the same whole. If you want to come see me talk, you want to see me get over of my own stage fright and you want to ask questions and hang out a bit, I would love to see you. I'm doing events in London, Rotterdam and Dublin in early November. And then after that, Vancouver and Toronto. This is all basically the 12th through the 20th. So it's going to be a busy November for me. So grab tickets, ryanholiday.net slash tour. Both the events in Australia sold out.

8:24So these will sell out also. So grab your tickets. I'll see you all soon.

8:52We'll see you next time.

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