Split It In Two — It’ll Have To Do | Everything Is Change

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1:19Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

2:00Split in two, it'll have to do. You just got a call about the accident. You just learned your accounts have been cleaned out. You saw something on your spouse's phone that you can never unsee. It's news like this that will split you in two. The loss of a child, a betrayal, a diagnosis. Never forget fortune's habit. Seneca reminds us of behaving exactly as she pleases. Life comes at you fast. It comes at you unmercifully when you didn't expect it, when you can least afford it. It's not fair, but you know what it is? It is a fact. And you know what else is a fact? Your son's soccer practice, your bills, the sun rising tomorrow, bringing its own set of practical logistics, problems, and obligations.

2:43As we said recently, it's not about whether these things hurt. They do. No amount of stoicism makes them not hurt. It's about whether you keep going, whether you do it with a broken heart. And by it, we mean drive to work, take care of your parents, get dinner prepared, get the homework done, do what is right. No one went easy on Marcus Aurelius. No one went easy on Epictetus. Life doesn't go easy on any of us. It splits us in two, and half will have to do, because that's the job, because people are counting on us, because that's how it goes, and has always gone.

3:22November 15th. Everything is change. Got the Daily Stoic, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. Today's quote comes to us from Marcus Realis. This is Meditations 523. He says, meditate often on the swiftness with which all that exists and is coming into being is swept by us and carried away. For substance is like rivers unending flow, its activities continually changing and its causes infinitely shifting so that almost nothing stands still. Marcus actually borrows this wonderful metaphor from Heraclitus, who was, I guess, quite fond of rivers. Marcus Reus would have written chunks of meditations near the Danube river as well.

4:12But Heraclitus said that no man steps in the same river twice because the river is changed and so is the man. Life is a constant state of change and so are we. To get upset by things is to wrongly assume that they will last. To kick ourselves or blame others is grabbing at the wind. To resent change is to wrongly assume that you have a choice in the matter. Everything is change. Embrace that and flow with it. I was just in Europe. I gave a talk in London. And one of the things I talked about in London was Queen Elizabeth, it seems like the monarchy is something that doesn't change. It's like existed forever.

4:53Maybe the people change from time to time, but the institution doesn't change. Of course, it's nothing but change. Actually, the motto of Queen Elizabeth, I talk about this in Discipline is Destiny, her motto, They took it from this Italian novelist, and he said that if things are going to stay the same, then things are going to have to change. Something like half the countries on earth today did not exist when she was born. The world literally remade itself. I mean, there was a world war, a cold war, the UN, all these massive changes happened. And she said, change is a discipline, right? Embracing change is a discipline.

5:32You need to have a kind of a flexibility as opposed to a rigidity. This is something Mark Sures talks about in meditations also. He says, you know, everything that you are now is a result of the changes that you've been through. You know, birth was a change. You did not exist and you were brought into existence. Then, of course, you got older and older and older. And so he says, you know, even death is that kind of change. And to fear it is to assume that that change is going to be bad as if there were many, many other changes you thought were going to be bad that were necessary in your life. So change is this ever-present, unavoidable thing.

6:09And the more we embrace it, the less we fight it, the more we go with it, the more we're focusing on the parts of it that we control. We control our attitude towards it. We control how we adapt to it, right? there's another line in Meditations Remarks for this is our adaptability has to look at events and go, ah, you are exactly what I'm looking for. And that's how we have to think about change. Ah, this is what I was looking for. This is what I wanted. Even when that change is a pandemic, even when that change is a bankruptcy, even when that change is being served with divorce papers. It's not what we wanted.

6:42It's not what we expected. It's not where we thought it was going to go, but here it is. And now we have to accept that change and come to terms with it, be one with it. I don't know. I'm recording this before the election. I don't know what change that will bring or won't bring. Somebody's going to be upset by that change. Somebody's going to think it's the change that we need, right? And zooming back and seeing that life is this perpetual, unending series of changes. I'm about to do a location change. I am heading now. I guess I'm doing my talk in Dublin today when you're listening to this. I'm doing Dublin today, and then I'm going to Vancouver and Toronto and then finally home.

7:21If you want to come see me on stage, ryanholiday.net slash tour. I feel like I've evolved and changed and grown and gotten better at this thing. It was also a thing that I wasn't doing before. You don't be, as I joked in my opening remarks when I got on stage, I said, look, I didn't become a writer to give talks to thousands of people. I was trying to kind of avoid that. But here we are. This is what happens. You have to adjust. You have to figure out how to be that person. You have to figure out how to step into that role. Like we were talking last week, you have to figure out how to play that role well.

7:55That's what stoic philosophy is about. That's what we are trying to do. That's the work of being a person in a world that doesn't control fortune, that doesn't control fate, that doesn't control events, but ultimately does control how we respond to those events. That's what it's all about. That's the message today. I hope everyone is doing well. I hope you're doing all right. Hope you can come see me on stage for these last two dates, ryanholiday.net slash tour. If you are in North America, I hope to see you there.

8:28Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com slash email.

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