It’s Counting Down For Each Of Us | Practice Love

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1:42Welcome 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.

2:23It may have been a couple hard weeks. It may have been a couple hard years. It may have been a tough decade, like the one that Marcus Aurelius had, which we've talked about before, complete with plagues and floods and betrayals and health issues and more. It may have been a hard life, like Epictetus'. You know what? At least you woke up above ground this morning. You're alive. Not everyone is so lucky. In fact, it may have seemed like you yourself may not have been so lucky. So here you are, alive, for now anyway. What are you going to do with it? What are you going to make of it? Think of all the people who would kill to be in your position.

3:00Think of all the people who have been killed and are thus not in your position. Think of all the dark days where, again, you were not so sure you would ever get to this position. Let that put everything in perspective. Let that give you some priority and urgency. Use this gift.

3:26Practice love. 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. And 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?

4:02And 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. There's a quote I like from Seneca. He 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 intense dissatisfaction at the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it. So this idea that we are all one, this sympathia idea to me, is the essence of stoicism.

4:43Stoicism 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 Hecato. 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. Wherever 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.

5:24Nature 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. And 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.

5:59What 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. Go 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.

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