The East Side of Sorrow

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1:19Welcome 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 dailysteak.com.

1:45The East Side of Sorrow There's no real way around it. Life is hard and filled with sorrow. Marcus Riles' life was defined by loss, starting with his father at age three, followed by half his children, his wife, and the Antonine Plague. Seneca saw Rome recede into the distance as he went into exile, and Musonius experienced that four times. Epictetus woke up each day for the three decades of his life as a slave. This was not fun, and it was not fair. Stoic philosophy didn't magically transform these events. It would be glib and preposterous to claim that it could. No, what stoic philosophy did for them, what it can do for us is make these events bearable, can give us perspective, can give us courage, can give us toughness and resilience, virtue in the face of all kinds of events.

2:34Can it take the sorrow away? No, it can't. Pain and suffering and loss are a part of life. It was part of life 2 ,000 years ago, and it is part of life today. It is part of life for the rich and powerful, like Marcus and Seneca. It was part of life for the powerless, like Epictetus. We don't control events, but we control how we respond to events. We will experience things that will make us sad, but we decide whether we give up, whether this breaks us, whether it makes us better or worse. That's what Stoicism did for them and what it can do for us.

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