Start The Clock. Just Start The Clock. | Plato's View

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1:30Welcome 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, and 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.

2:10Start the clock. Just start the clock. We don't like how long they're taking to get back to us. It's slowing down the process, keeping us from doing what we want to do. We don't like the estimate from the vendor who just told us it would be an extra six weeks over the initial projections. We're frustrated. The investment advisor told us we won't hit our goal until later than expected. And there's no question this is annoying. It may well be fixable if they could get their act together, but we don't control that or them. You know what we do control though? We controlled how long it took us to reach out to get that bid.

2:44We controlled how long that thing was on our to-do list and the fact that we waited until now to get around to doing it. We're the ones who hemmed and hawed about the decision we're now Russian. A stoic understands that they don't control how long it takes other people to do things, but still they don't see themselves as powerless. No, they embrace the power that they have, namely when they start the clock. Things take time, so why add time by being indecisive, by procrastinating, by sitting on things. You don't yell at paint for drying slowly, urging it to hurry up because you have guests coming over.

3:18You finish painting with enough time for it to do what it's going to do. And so it goes for life and other people. You can't rush them along, but we can make sure that we're not unnecessarily tearing, not adding to the clock on our end. Accept that others are slow. If you need things to go faster, speed up on your end.

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4:49Plato's View. This is the June 2nd entry in the Daily Stoic. How beautifully Plato put it, Mark Aurelius writes in Meditation 748. Whenever you want to talk about people, it's best to take a bird's eye view and see everything all at once, of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings, and divorces, births, and deaths, noisy courtrooms, or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets, all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites. And actually, let me give you the Hayes one today, too, because if I recall correctly, he renders this quite beautifully. Plato has it right.

5:31If you want to talk about people, you need to look down on the earth from above. Herds and armies, farms and weddings, divorces, births, deaths, noisy courtrooms, desert places, all the foreign peoples, holidays, days of mourning, market days, all mixed together, a harmony of opposites. And there's actually a beautiful dialogue by the poet Lucian, who is Seneca's nephew, I believe, in which the narrator is given the ability to fly and see the world from above. Turning his eyes earthward, he sees how comically small even the richest people, the biggest estates, and entire empires look from above.

6:10All their battles and concerns are made petty in perspective. In ancient times, this exercise was only theoretical. The highest that anyone could get was the top of a mountain or a building a few stories tall. But as technology has progressed, humans have been able to actually take that bird's eye view and greater. Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut, was one of the first people to see the earth from outer space. And as he later recounted, in outer space, you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it.

6:46From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles away and say, look at that, you son of a bitch. And then I add, many a problem can be solved with the perspective of Plato's view. Use it. You know, I just got off a plane. I'm getting on a plane again shortly. And, you know, you look out the window and you see it. Sometimes when I fly into Austin, I can actually see where I live. And, you know, 40 acres suddenly, very small. A thousand acres, very small. The Tesla factory, one of the biggest buildings I've ever seen in my life, very small skyscrapers very small people minuscule i think what's what edgar mitchell is talking about is a sort of paradox of it everything seems very small but everything also seems very connected right and so wars and uh international boundaries these all seem you know so insignificant such artificial and petty distinctions i was telling you i was recently down in Big Bend National Park, and right, you look over this vast expanse, and it humbles you in that sense.

8:00And then also you're like, here's the United States, here's Mexico, here's the United States, here's Mexico, you're walking on the one side of the river. And then it's just a, and we don't have to get into some complicated discussion about immigration, but it's just a reminder, it's like how arbitrary someone born over here gets this kind of life, someone born on this side gets this kind of life. And, and they'll shoot you if you, if you come across the border with this intention, but me splashing around in the water with my kids, that's totally fine, right? You realize that all these things we take very seriously are not that serious.

8:32And what matters, I think Marcus is saying, when you take Plato's view is like our connection to other people, our obligations as human beings, being good, being decent. You know, Alexander the Great's empire looks very enormous and significant and powerful and important up close, but zoom out, it doesn't seem that different than anything else. And the immensity of the damage that he did in creating it suddenly comes into view as well. So Plato's view is about getting perspective. And it's a reminder that our technology helps give us that view and that we should appreciate. I know if you ever watch the Daily Stoked videos, sometimes we use drone shots and it's been fun to learn how to fly this drone.

9:17But this drone has also expanded my perspective. It's allowed me to see things, even myself, right, from different angles. I never saw what I looked like running from 30 meters above me, right? I haven't seen what the angle of the road that I like to run on looks like that way. And it helps you appreciate things differently. It gives you that bird's eye view. And I think it's really important. I think time lapses can do this too. Of course, just sitting there and looking at it, climbing up to a high spot, looking at the stars can give you this too. But the Stoics were trying to humble themselves.

9:55They were trying to get perspective. They were trying to remember our obligations and connections to other people. they were trying as Annie Duke says to get to the outside of their problems outside of the insularness of their viewpoint and their urges and their desires and their emotional reactions and I just think it's so important and please do avail yourself of that knowledge it's very powerful and important as Marcus says as Plato does as Lucian does and I'll leave that with you now to chew on for the rest of the day

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