This is Our Great Fortune | Ask DS

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1:13Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

1:54Marcus Aurelius was wealthy on a scale you cannot even imagine. Seneca too. These were men with enormous fortunes and control of imperial power that controlled life and death. They had fame beyond fame. And yet you are far more blessed and fortunate than they are. If Marcus Aurelius wanted to read a book at night, think of all the energy and effort that would have been required to fulfill his wish. Slaves would have to be called, torches lit and held. If it was cold outside, think of what was required to keep him warm. If Seneca wanted to travel, he had few options, and most of them involved serious risk from pirates to shipwrecks and disease.

2:33You, you get light by flipping a switch. You can hop in your car, you can zip up a hoodie or pull on some socks, two minor engineering marvels that may rival the great Roman aqueducts. Compare the pandemic of 2020 to the Antonine Plague. Would you rather be poor today or wealthy in Rome 2 ,000 years ago? Right, because you are immensely lucky. You have things that wealth and power and fame would not even have dreamed of buying in the ancient world. You have security, you have comfort, you have access and knowledge that the most brilliant doctors of antiquity would have genuinely seen as magic.

3:10It is good to remember this. We are incredibly lucky. We should be grateful today and every day.

3:25Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Back in May, I was in Connecticut very, very, very briefly. Well, actually not that briefly. I think I flew to Boston. I drove out to Connecticut. I spent the night, got a nice run in in the morning. I love running in towns with great places to see water. And I do remember there being a river. I saw it on Google Maps. I went up over it. I did a nice run. And then I went in and I did this talk for Webster Bank. They were saying it was the first time they'd all been together in one room since 2019. Things are still getting back to normal.

4:01Remember during the pandemic in like 2020, we were like, I can't wait for things to go back to normal. Well, it takes a while for things to get back to normal. Some things move more slowly than others. Events took a while to get rescheduled, plans change. Anyways, it was cool to be in a room with people that were excited to be in a room together. Some were first-year analysts, some were seasoned banking execs, but they asked me a bunch of questions about stoicism. And I wear a little mic when I do my talks. And sometimes it doesn't pick up the question. So I'm going to give you my answers, and then I'm going to riff roughly on what they were asking.

4:36But I think you'll enjoy this. So what they'd asked me about is someone was saying, like, did I always have this perspective about stoicism? Or was there some day of enlightenment when I converted? Yeah, I think stoicism is a thing that you study, as opposed to a thing that you have studied, or that you understand it's supposed to be this practice. And I think when what Marcus is doing in meditations is writing these things over and over to himself as a reminder, right? If he just intuitively knew it and naturally did it, he probably wouldn't have needed to write it in his diary. He's trying to remind himself as the world is literally falling apart, hey, it's not unfortunate that this happened to me.

5:14It's fortunate and I'm going to be better for it. So I see it as this thing that you kind of understand on one level. The quotes all make sense. The stories are great, but then it's this process of going through stuff and going, oh, this is what they meant by that. This is a chance to apply it. So I think, I mean, this is a thing I've been studying and talking and writing about now for a long time, but obviously the last couple of years have been a wonderful opportunity to practice all these ideas. And I've got little kids, so that's certainly a chance to practice stoicism as well. So I'm trying to practice it and trying to put these ideas into my actual life.

5:55Am I perfect at it? Absolutely not. But I see it more as a process than a thing. And then someone was saying, why did I zoom in on Stoic philosophy and as a career instead of something else? Which, of course, I did do a bunch of other stuff first, but I thought it was an interesting question. I think we're all looking for a framework or a set of principles that can help us in an unpredictable world. So I had a career in business. I was in marketing for a number of big companies and then public figures. And I was trying to make sense of the craziness of all of that. And this thing that I'd read about and sort of fallen into when I was in college, again, it really became the thing, oh, this is where you apply that.

6:38It's not this sort of dusty old thing that worked in the ancient world. But in fact, things haven't changed that much in 2000 years. So it's just what sort of worked for me. And I'm excited. I get excited talking about it and sharing about it, as you can tell. And I think we have this preconception that philosophy is not for us, that it's not practical, that it doesn't have much to teach us, you know, because it's all these unpronounceable names from a really long time ago. And what I like so much about the Stoics is for almost none of them was Stoicism the main thing that they did. They had jobs, they were soldiers, or they were heads of state, They ran business empires.

7:19You know, they were mothers and fathers. And stoicism was a thing that helped them with that as opposed to, you know, the thing that they taught students. And then someone was asking me, and this is something I think a lot about because athletes are passionate. You have to have passion in a marriage. If you don't love what you're doing, you're not going to do it very well. So how do you balance being interested in stoicism, aspiring to be stoic, but then like what you do, have ambitions, have drive, care about the things that matter to you in life? So that was a great question. Yeah, it's kind of a misreading of Stoicism that has existed for a really long time, just as we, you know, when people hear the word Epicurean, they think, you know, a lover of pleasure, which is not what the philosophy was about.

8:03It wasn't about hedonism, just as Stoicism wasn't emotionlessness or suppression. one of my favorite passages at the beginning of meditations Mark Sreos talks about how he says he learned from the Stoics to be free of the passions so that's like roiling disruptive destructive emotions he says but full of love right and so that's love isn't a word that we think of when we think of Stoicism but it's there right in the beginning of meditations And so what Marcus is saying is he's trying not to be angry or jealous or anxious, these being emotions that, you know, are largely about sort of worrying about things that are outside of our control.

8:46And he's trying to push those away, be in control of himself, but give himself over to affection and consideration and empathy and all these other wonderful things towards other people. And so when we actually look at the lives of the Stoics, again, I think it's really important. You know, sometimes the words can feel a little bit like, oh, is this a, you know, is this a stripping of all the wonderful things out of life? But then when we look at who the Stoics were, if they had totally become emotionless and uncaring, they wouldn't have gotten married. They wouldn't have had kids. They wouldn't have loved the theater.

9:17They wouldn't have loved humor. They wouldn't have made works of art. They wouldn't have tried to accomplish or achieve things. They wouldn't have strived to make the world better through the political offices that they held. So the actual Stoics, I think, provide a sort of how we balance that out.

9:38Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to The Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. it's an honor please spread the word tell people about it and this isn't to sell anything i just wanted to say thank you look ads are annoying they are to be avoided if at all possible i understand as a content creator why they need to exist that's why i don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going.

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