Joy Even So (Part 1)

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1:51Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

2:17Joy even so. John Adams' life was not an easy one. First, because it was just hard to be alive in the 18th century. It was hard to make dinner. It was hard to stay warm in the winter. It's hard to travel even short distances. It was hard not to die of the endless diseases and injuries that were so tragically common. And then, of course, there were the years of war that he lived through, the long postings overseas, the political intrigues, the slanders in the press, the betrayals and the heartbreaks. Griefs upon griefs, disappointments upon disappointments was how Adams once described life. It's impossible to read his letters in nonsense, as we said recently about Marcus Aurelius' meditations, a kind of world weariness.

3:00And yet for all that weighed on Adams, like the Stoics, it never broke him. On the contrary, he smiled his way through, because that full quote goes as follows, griefs upon griefs, disappointments upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry world, nonwithstanding. His great biographer David McCullough writes in John Adams that this observation could have served as Adams's epitaph. It could have been Seneca or Epictetus's or Marcus's too. Yes, life is hard. People can suck. Yet it's still a gay and merry world. Still, joy is possible. Still, the best way is to face life with a smile. Never a sneer.

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5:50And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.