It’s Always Been Like This (But Worse)

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1:26It's always been like this. But worse. It's so easy to idealize the past, as if people haven't always been deranged, as if things haven't always been falling apart, as if fate hasn't always been indifferent to everyone and everything. Socrates lived through a 27-year-long war, a great power conflict between Athens and Sparta, and then in a country ruled by what was known as the Thirty Tyrants. Zeno lived in a world torn apart by the wars of Alexander the Great's successors and his own personal shipwreck. Cato saw the Republic fall. Seneca lived through Nero and watched Rome literally burn. So unstable were things that shortly after his death, people enjoyed the spectacle of the year of the four emperors.

2:15Epictetus spent three decades in slavery. Marcus Aurelius, as we've detailed, saw floods and famines and wars. Indeed, this whole period is known as the beginning of the decline and fall. One could go on and on. The point is, it has always been rough. The point is, it will always be rough. The Stoics were tough. They had to be to get through what they lived through. And you will need to be tough if you're going to make it through what the present and the future holds. None of us control where we were born, only how we live. None of us control what our leaders do, not really anyway, only how we live, how we act, how we lead in our own lives.

2:56We don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens. We don't control the awfulness of our times, only whether we will rise above them, only whether we will do good for and inside them.

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