Most Things Haven’t Changed (But This Has) | What Do the Stoics Say About Attachment?

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0:36Ryan Holiday: And with their AI multi-model subscription service, users can access Rainio AI in Gemini for free or upgrade for$9.99 a month to experience ChatGPT and DeepSake. There's even a voice memo and AI summary feature that can record meetings and sudden inspirations and let the AI instantly transcribe and summarize them for you. The Rayneo I.O. smart glasses are perfect for professionals, parents, or anyone handling high information density. You can check them out at Rayneo.com, R-A-Y-N-E-O.com. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:23Ryan Holiday: Most things haven't changed, but now this has. Some 675 ,000 days, more than 16 million hours, nearly a billion minutes. That's roughly how long it's been since Marcus Aurelius was writing what we now call meditations. Think of everything that's happened since then. Empires have risen and fallen. Entire countries have come into existence. We've invented the printing press, the airplane, the internet. We've walked on the moon. And yet you open meditations and there he is, trying to talk himself into getting out of bed, preparing himself to deal with difficult people, reminding himself to be patient, to do his work, to make good use of the time that he has.

2:15Ryan Holiday: You go back a little further and you find Epictetus explaining why we get so anxious about the things we don't control. You find Seneca writing about people who complain that life is short while finding endless ways to waste it. All those centuries, all that change. And here we are working on the same things. Marcus himself noticed this when he looked back at the generations before him. The Age of Vespasian, for example, he wrote. people doing the exact same things. Marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping others will die, complaining about their own lives, falling in love, putting away money, seeking high office and power.

3:02Ryan Holiday: Human beings are human beings. We have the same weaknesses, we have the same tendencies, we have the same potential. Which is why people keep finding their way to the Stoics. You pick up something written nearly 2 ,000 years ago and find help with something that happened to you this morning, an argument, a disappointment, a worry that kept you up last night. That's what we were trying to do 10 years ago, it's Ryan by the way, when we published the Daily Stoic. It was supposed to be a passage a day, something to think about, something to try, something to carry with you into whatever the day brings, something from the past to help you with the present.

3:41Ryan Holiday: And while the problems haven't changed much, a lot has happened in the 10 years since The Daily Stoic came out. I've had my own arguments, my own disappointments, my own losses, successes, sleepless nights. I've kept reading The Stoics, kept writing about them, kept talking to people here on this podcast about them. So when the publisher gave us a chance to redo The Daily Stoic, I didn't just want to slap a new intro on the book. I wanted to go through it page by page to see if I could make it better. The ideas from the Stoics haven't changed, although we've added about 60 new ones to the book.

4:15Ryan Holiday: But my interpretation and my understanding of them has. And I think that's what has made a better, certainly an expanded and revised 10th anniversary edition of The Daily Stoic, which is available now. You can get some signed and numbered first editions before we run out. We also have a new leather-bound edition, which I think is extra beautiful. Check all that out. Anywhere books are sold, dailystoic.com slash ds10. I just recorded a new version of the audiobook, which I hadn't done before. And all of that, as I said, dailystoic.com slash ds10.

4:57Ryan Holiday: Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just packing up, heading to the airport today for this Australia tour. First one in New Zealand, then Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Sydney again. I don't know exactly. I'm very excited. I'm excited to see all of you there. I think there's a few tickets left if you want. I can grab those at dailystoiclive.com. But as part of the tour, they asked me to do a couple of podcasts. And I did this podcast called A Life of Greatness. It's one of the big podcasters over there. Her name is Sarah Grinberg. And we had a lovely conversation.

5:32Ryan Holiday: We had to figure out the time difference. It was crazy to do it sort of. I think I came back to the studio, did it after my kids went to sleep. But it was a lovely little chat. And I thought I would bring that to you just to kind of turn the tables a little bit and remind you to come see me while I'm in Australia. I'm excited to swim in the rock pools. I've never been to New Zealand before. So I'm pretty excited about that as well. You can find A Life of Greatness on all the podcast platforms. You can follow Sarah on Instagram at Sarah Grinberg. And I'll see you in Australia and New Zealand, or maybe a little bit closer to home if you're listening in the US.

6:08Ryan Holiday: I'm going to be in Nashville in mid-November, also Boston. Then in December, I am in DC and Philadelphia. All that at dailystoiclive.com. Violent threats against executives are growing at an alarming rate. When a company experiences backlash, executives are the first people that are blamed. And people try to track them down through their address, the personal details that are available online, so that backlash can lead right to someone's front door. The team at Ironwall knows this better than anyone. They've protected some of the most targeted executives and individuals on the planet for almost two decades.

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7:21Ryan Holiday: The link is in the show notes. Benjamin Franklin said time is money in 1748. That was his advice to a young man. 278 years later, some of us, depending on what you do, are still spending part of every month typing receipts into a form. It's bad use of your time. That's bad use of company time. Expense reports are tedious. It's not what I want my employees doing. Well, Ramp makes collecting and submitting expenses super simple. With Ramp, expenses submit themselves. You just text or email your receipt and Ramp categorizes codes and submits it. And when you book business travel with Ramp, they find the best flights and hotels you're actually allowed to book.

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8:47Ryan Holiday: I write every day. So let me break that down a little bit. So the Daily Stoke email, it goes out every day and it's gone out every day for in September. It will be the 10th year of the Daily Stoke email. And then I also do one called Daily Dad, which is a parenting one. So it's really two a day. But what I do is I write every day. usually, you know, sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes three. I'm always writing. And then those get processed by the editor that I work with for the list. And we pick out a schedule based. So what I try to do is take out the pressure of needing to do tomorrow's email.

9:29Ryan Holiday: Right. So like today I wrote two about, you know, change and improvement, like how so often we cling to the person we've always been as opposed to, you know, trying to become someone or something new. And so I wrote two of those emails. So obviously one isn't going to go out tomorrow and the other isn't going to go out the day after that. It's two relatively similarly themed things. So that process only works if I have 30 or 40 of them in the can, which I try to do it. So So what I try to do is just always contribute something as opposed to like sitting down and going, what am I gonna do today?

10:10Ryan Holiday: And when I'm working on a book, what I'm doing is I'm taking this big thing, which is a book that might be a one or two year process. I'm two years into the book that I'm doing now and I'm probably halfway done. So let's call that a four year process. I have a little chunk that I'm working on today that as long as I show up and put in some time on, I can call that a successful day. I'm not like needing to reach a certain checkpoint, I guess. I try to break the big task down into component tasks that feel very manageable and there's not much pressure about. Great. It's interesting to hear from someone else that writes as well.

11:01That seems like a very efficient way of doing it. I want to talk about getting over the hard times that we kind of touched on before, but the idea, which is kind of a principle in Stoicism, that everything is an opportunity, even suffering. Sort of the idea that the obstacle is the way. True Intellectually people would go yes yes I understand that But again when it comes to head It would be why does this happen Say someone gets an illness Why does this have to happen to me All my friends are well True You know things that seem really tough for the individual how would you use stoicism to look upon those situations look I do think it's important not

11:53Ryan Holiday: to be glib about it you know like if someone comes to me and they say like look I just found out I have terminal cancer I don't say to them you know hey the obstacle is the way what are you going to do with this like that that's for that I think that the stoics have been speaking these truths for thousands of years and I think I think that can resonate with a person but it's not my place to be like, you know, sort of buck up and handle this, right? Like you should be smiling through this. I just, that's not how I think about it. But one of the things I do try to point out to people, and I try to remind myself of this more than anything else, is like, look back on your life.

12:32Ryan Holiday: Even a relatively privileged life, if you start to go through it, you just see a catalog of like one thing going wrong after another that like, if you had said, this is what you're going to have to deal with, they would have, they would have been like, well, I can't deal with that. Like, just go back to, to March, 2020 and say to someone, Hey, let me tell you what the next six years are going to entail. Right. You'd be like, that's insane. I just can't possibly, I couldn't possibly deal with one thing after another like that. but you know what you did because you actually don't really have a choice right the only thing you have a choice about is like how much you suffer inside of that like how much you add on top of that by by going this isn't normal this isn't fair this is ridiculous this is so and so's fault right like the the really the only thing you look back on and and wish you did differently was like how much time you wasted before you just got down to dealing with it.

13:39Ryan Holiday: And so I do think one of the empowering things that we can take from looking back on our own lives is just like how far we've come, how much we've dealt with. And then that should give us some sense of how practiced we are for whatever the future can bring. And I think we can also look back and go like look at who you can look at who you come from like your grandparents your great-grandparents the people who settled the country you live in you know whatever your ancestry is like all of us come from like this chain of survivors who are not constitutionally different than any of us they just they just dealt with what was in front of them just like you're going to deal with whatever is in front of you.

14:28Ryan Holiday: That's kind of how I think about it. You know, in Buddhism, they talk a lot about attachment and the idea that attachment obviously causes suffering. The more that we're clinging onto something, when it goes, we become sad and we suffer. And Stoicism kind of circles around not a dissimilar theme. I wonder how you in your everyday life work around the things that are very good and not being attached to them. Because I know for myself, we can get so excited about things. And, you know, and I have learned over time, like, as much as you can get sad, you shouldn't try and get so crazy excited either.

15:14It's kind of finding that middle ground.

15:17Ryan Holiday: Yeah, the even keel, I think, is a better way of thinking of stoicism. It's not too high, not too low. But I'll give you something I think about with attachment. I have two young kids, as I was saying. And one of the things that can make me spiral is just thinking about something happening to my kids, right? You're like, you don't want them to suffer. You don't want them to feel pain. You don't want them to get lost. You don't want them to get hurt. You know, there is your whole world, right? And so you have this vulnerability, right? That's the problem with attachment. You have this vulnerability, like, They say like having kids is like your heart running around outside your body, which is true.

15:52Ryan Holiday: And then I go, OK, you feel that way. You know, you would be devastated if anything ever happened to your kids. And then like just this afternoon, because my kids are out of school and my son was talking to me about this thing. And then he's like, here, I want to show you this video, you know. And then I'm like, no, I don't have time, you know. Uh, and so here he is trying to connect with me, trying to show me something. And I'm like, no, no, I don't have time. I have to do this work thing, which I did not actually have to do. Um, and so like what, what you're doing is like, you're worried about losing this thing in the future as you are in the middle of pushing it away in the present.

16:33Ryan Holiday: Right. And, and so I don't know if this, I think this attachment thing is like, is weird because I think some people take from it and they're like, oh, you just shouldn't be attached. I think what they're saying is that you should be present and enjoy it while you have it. The Stoics would just say, tell yourself that you don't actually own this, that your possession of it is tenuous. And therefore, you have to get really good at being present and grateful for having it right now. And then also be grateful and appreciative for the fact that you had it, that you got up until this point with that person, with that career, with that, you know, possession.

17:20Ryan Holiday: Right. There is there's another Buddhist story about like this, this monk has a cup that he loves and he tells himself, you know, the cup is already broken. The cup is already broken. And someday the cup breaks. you know telling yourself that this thing that you have is not yours forever I think is is um is the way to think about it but that doesn't mean you don't care about it it just means I think you actually care about it intensely while you have it you just understand that the future is not guaranteed wow that's true it's true it's it's it's hard um but you know obviously a great way to look at it.

18:04You, well, the Stoics talk a lot and you have done a lot of work in the idea that death is imminent. And it's something that we should think about regularly. I actually think about it very regularly. I don't know if that's such a positive thing. And I think I think about it, I scare myself and I try to stop thinking about it. But at the same time, I understand mortality and I know that life can change in an instant. I wonder, what is the work that you have done with thinking about life and the fact that, you know, death is something that, unfortunately, to some, come with being born and something, well, probably the only thing in life that is a certainty?

18:54Ryan Holiday: Yeah, it's not that it's necessarily imminent. It could be, right, which is why we have to be aware of it. But certainly it is inevitable, right? Like it is the one prophecy that never fails, as they say. Like everybody's born with a terminal diagnosis, just for some it's more looming than others. I think when the Stoics talk about this practice of what they call momentum or meditating on mortality, it's saying along the lines of what we're just talking about, like don't put off till tomorrow what you could do today. Don't take people for granted. Don't take your health or your position for granted because, you know, it can all change like that.

19:38Ryan Holiday: And so I think from Memento Mori, we get a couple of things. We get a sense of priority, right? A clarity about what's important and what's not important. like if you suddenly found out that you had a month to live how many things would you immediately stop doing um and and and what does that tell you about those things right um there's a passage in meditations where marx rose goes so let me get this straight you're afraid of dying because you won't be able to do this anymore like you know whatever the dumb stuff that we waste our time with is like that's what you're clinging to life for um and then i think the other thing that gives us this humility, you know, like, Hey, I'm a, I'm not a God.

20:22Ryan Holiday: I am not exempt. I am not special. I'm an animal. I'm biodegradable. Uh, I'm going to end up, you know, equalized, uh, like everybody else. I remember I was in, when I was in Sydney two years ago for those talks, I, um, I was running along, you know, the sort of Bondi Beach trail there. And I stopped it at the Waverly Cemetery, which is like maybe the prettiest cemetery in the world. Like it's just absolutely incredible there with waves crashing up. And I remember I was walking through it. And, you know, first off, it's like, you know, none of these people are appreciating it. Like they don't it doesn't mean anything to them that they're buried in the most pretty cemetery in the world.

21:05Ryan Holiday: Like all their time for enjoying this view is gone, you know, it's worth remembering. But two, I remember I was walking and I'm forgetting the person's name, which I guess illustrates my point. There was a little placard and I was talking about this person who died and was buried there. And 250 ,000 people came to their funeral. And this was like 100 years ago. It wasn't like, you know, recent. But so you think about how many people lived in Australia or Sydney that 250 ,000 people would come to this guy's funeral. I mean, that would be an insane amount of people now. It'd be a sane amount of people in any country at any time.

21:45Ryan Holiday: But but 100 years ago, it's even more. And anyways, you're just like. In the end, it's no different than any of the other people buried here, like one person, 250 ,000 people, you know, it all cuts us down the same. We all become worm food, You know, and we are all eventually and inevitably forgotten. That's one of the interesting things in meditations. Marcus Rios is talking about like these other emperors and how quickly their names have become unpronounceable and unfamiliar to people. and that he's like, look, the same thing will happen to you. You know, how many people know of Marcus Rios as the old guy from the movie Gladiator?

22:34Ryan Holiday: Like the most powerful man in the world is just like some guy in a Russell Crowe movie that they saw. And that's what happens, right? And so I think this practice, it feels morbid and it is, but it has a bunch of philosophical benefits. I wonder what you have changed in your life when you have thought more about death and the idea that, you know, things do change fast. Sure. Yeah, I mean, a bunch of things. I think one is I'm like, what am I doing this for? Like, why did I say yes to this? Why did I get roped into this? It's like I was afraid to be rude, like to come off as rude by turning down an invitation or ignoring an invitation.

23:27Ryan Holiday: And I was willing to trade the most precious resource in the world to not be perceived that way. It's like the craziest. It's the craziest thing. You know, I think a lot of people who are ambitious is because the idea of ego. You know, you want to make your mark. You want to leave a legacy. You know, you want to be remembered, you know, and posthumous fame, the Stoics remind us, is like maybe the most worthless thing you could possibly imagine. um like you don't get to enjoy it as i said like that person who had 250 000 people at their funeral they're not like oh yes i did it you know uh thanks guys this really makes me feel special right like they didn't experience any of that they don't know there's a plaque right like uh authors who are dead don't appreciate that their books are still in print you know it doesn't do anything for you.

24:28Ryan Holiday: So I think just sort of prioritizing what's actually important, which isn't to say, oh, what's actually important is being famous to people who are alive. It's just realizing like, hey, this whole contest doesn't matter at all. And then it reminds me to kind of slow down and be present. There's some famous singer, I forget who it was. They were on some TV show and they said, you know, you know, you've got this diagnosis where, you know, what has it taught you? And he just said, enjoy every sandwich. That's what it taught him. And so I do think there's something special about just being present and enjoying the ordinary things in life, you know, doing the dishes, sitting in traffic, reading a book, watching, You know, some of these things feel more special than others, but at some point in your life, you would trade anything to be able to get to do that again or for a little bit more of that.

25:30Ryan Holiday: And I do think the Memento Mori stuff reminds us like, hey, I have this thing right now that in the future I will want desperately. And what am I doing with it? I'm on my phone. I think about that often. I've often talked about it on the podcast, the idea of finding happiness in the mundane. And similar to you, knowing that at the end of life, those are the moments that we'll want back, right? Totally. And they may seem mundane now, but I know that they will not be mundane then. And there is joy in that. When they're actually not mundane, if you can cultivate a more poetic way of looking at them.

26:15Ryan Holiday: Like an artist, you know, sees a basket of fruit and goes, no, that's like the prettiest thing I've seen in the world. Like, look, of course, the Grand Canyon or the Waverly Cemetery or the Blue Mountains or, you know, whatever natural wonders of the earth are, they're worth celebrating and seeing. and they're good bucket list items. But just the insane beauty of any city at night when it's all lit up or the mess of a room that a child has made, you can see that as frustrating and annoying and the thing you have to clean up or you can go like, this is a well-played in room. Like you get to decide how you see things.

26:59Ryan Holiday: That is kind of the essence of stoicism. So even that idea of mundane or ordinary, You know, the Stoics, like some of the most beautiful passages in their writing is when they're just noticing regular things in life, but they're doing it with a kind of, you know, they're doing it with a kind of awe and fascination. It's like sometimes we'd see this when somebody's like on drugs and they're just like, whoa, you know, they're just seeing something they've ordinarily been inured to with a kind of a fresh set of eyes. That I think is really important, too.