No One Can Give You This | Check Your Privilege

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

1:09Education isn't something anyone can give you. It's something you get for yourself. It's something you take. It's not somewhere you went to school for classes for a lesson, but somewhere you are going. It's not something you did. It's something you are doing. By his own telling, we're told that Seneca took to his education with gusto, that he laid siege to the classroom and was the first to arrive and the last to leave it. Cato was famous for his philosophical dinners, inviting the smartest and wisest minds of the ancient world to discuss the timeless trials of everyday life. Scipio Aemilianus, the great scholar-warrior of Rome, was ever engaged in the pursuit of arms or his studies, an ancient historian tells us.

1:55He was either training his body by exposing it to dangers or his mind by learning. And of course, there is a famous story about an elderly Marcus Aurelius spotted leaving his palace in Rome. Where are you going? a friend asked. I'm off to see Sextus the philosopher, he replied, to learn that which I do not yet know. It never stops. It is never handed to you. No, you must get wisdom yourself. Indeed, you cannot find a Stoic who did not take their education into their own hands, who did not give themselves a great education, even if they had access to fine teachers, and you'll find that they all remain forever a student of life and literature.

2:38Why do you wait? Seneca asks us. Wisdom comes haphazard to no man. The reality is there's no shortcut to wisdom, no app, no AI bot, no secret formula. It can't be hacked. It can't be downloaded. It must be earned through the same hard work that people have been doing for thousands of years, reading and thinking and living and reflecting. And that's what the new book from me, the final in the Four Virtue series. I have it right here. I've been working on it now for six plus years. I'm super proud of it. And it's now available for pre-order. If you like Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, or Right Thing Right Now, this is the fourth and final book.

3:18We have not just signed and numbered first editions of Wisdom Takes Work, but we also have a special limited edition run of all four books, signed and numbered just 1 ,500 of them. I'm just finishing up the signing of those now. We've got a bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses for people who pre-order any of the books, bonus chapters, signed pages from the manuscript. We're going to do a special Q &A. Plus, you can have dinner with me. If you want to learn about these, grab your number, sign first editions. Just go to dailystoic.com slash wisdom. I'll link to it all in today's show notes. Grab that four book series before it runs out.

3:53If you're going to want to give some to some friends, grab some more. You can get those manuscript pages. Bunch of awesome stuff. I hope to see you at the Philosopher's Dinner that we're going to do. And I'm really excited for you to grab this book when it comes out in October. But it supports authors in a big way if you pre-order them. So if you could do that, I would really appreciate it. DailyStoic.com slash pre-order and grab Wisdom Takes Work and round out the Four Virtues series. Thanks, everyone.

4:25Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Basko County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

5:10We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven it across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory.

5:52Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance of the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that. But I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a bestselling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

6:33My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, Empathetic Kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

7:10Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

7:29Check your privilege. This is the July 28th entry in the Daily Stoic. And today's quote comes to us from Musonius Rufus, the teacher of Epictetus. Some people are sharp and others are dull. Some are raised in a better environment, others in worse. The latter having inferior habits and nurture will require more by the way of proof and careful instruction to master these teachings and to be formed by them. in the same way that bodies in a bad state must be given a great deal of care when perfect health is sought. At the end of a frustrating exchange, you might find yourself thinking, oh, this person is such an idiot, or asking, why can't they just do things right?

8:08But not everyone has had the advantages that you've had. That's not to say that your life has been easy. You've just had a head start over some people. And that's why it is our duty to understand and be patient with others. Philosophy is a spiritual formation, care of the soul. Some need more care than others, just as some have a better metabolism or were born taller than others. The more forgiving and tolerant you can be of others, the more you can be aware of your various privileges and advantages, the more helpful and patient you will be. And again, I think it's worth pointing out here that Epictetus was taught by Musonius Rufus.

8:47So, And Musonius Rufus is this teacher. He's known as the Roman Socrates. He's great and wise and brilliant. And he teaches the best and the brightest of Rome, most of which would be rich, powerful, privileged people. And yet somehow he makes room in his classroom for Epictetus. And you think about where Epictetus came from. He walks with a limp because of the years in slavery, because of the torture he underwent. You think about the deprivation, the struggle. So Musonius Rufus finds not just a way to reach Epictetus, but make him great. He's patient with him. He encourages him. And this isn't the only evidence we have of Musonius Rufus sort of understanding his own privilege and being generous and open-minded.

9:28Musonius Rufus also famously says that women should be taught philosophy, which was a remarkably progressive thing at that time. So I know like when people hear checker privilege, this was a less loaded term I used as the title of this section when I wrote the book in 2015 and it came out in 2016, I get people have an instinctive reaction to this, oh, it's woke or whatever. But the truth is we are all privileged in some form or another. And how do I know this? Because you are listening to this on a podcast, which means you have a smartphone. Maybe you're driving in a car. It means you're commuting to a job in a city that has public transportation.

10:03And there are literally billions of people for whom that is not just not true, but almost incomprehensibly luxurious and wonderful to them. They could not even conceive of doing some of the things that you take for granted. And then even in the context of, like, let's say you had a super hard life, and I tried to make that caveat in the thing. Maybe you're tall. Maybe you're beautiful. Maybe your parents actually loved you as a child, right? Maybe you haven't been horribly abused, or maybe you were horribly abused, but not as horribly as other people have. We all have privileges in our life. We all have advantages.

10:42We all have things that give us a leg up in the world. And that's not to say that the other things haven't happened. It's one, to be grateful for those things and to be patient with people that don't have those things. And to try to sprinkle the advantages we have, to share it, to spread the wealth, to lift others up, and to be patient and forgiving and understanding with the people who have not been blessed the way that we have. To be like Musonius Rufus, to be able to say, Musonius Rufus was powerful and important and had access to the best and the brightest, and his greatest legacy was this former slave that he helped.

11:24And through helping that former slave, he helped not just that person, not just improve their life, but had an immediate impact then through Marcus Aurelius and through you and I today. We would not be listening to this were it not for the generosity and patience and understanding of Mussoni's Rufus II Epictetus. And I think that's a wonderful thing to emulate and to pay forward.

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