This Is The Revenge

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.

1:09like 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 best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My 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.

1:48On 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. Becky. 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. This is the revenge. What they're doing is terrible. It's short-sighted. Much of it is illegal.

2:31The news is depressing. The interactions are disappointing. Welcome to living in a world filled with the kind of people that it has always been filled with. Jerks, crooks, bullies, overconfident morons. You think Seneca didn't see this in Nero's court? You think Cato didn't experience it every day in Rome? Of course they did, probably worse. So how did they fight it? How did they get revenge on the bad guys? Well, first off, let's credit the Stoics with fighting. The best Stoics were not passive. The best Stoics did not simply accept the awfulness of their times or participate in the corruption.

3:09They were part of the resistance. They were the valiant opposition. They didn't always succeed, but they tried. But they did always get their revenge, and it is a way that we can get revenge today. the Stoics did not let the awfulness and evil of their time make them awful and evil. They took their revenge, as Marcus Aurelius said we must, by not being like our enemy. They took their revenge by being good and decent and kind. They took their revenge by living their lives well, by enjoying the beauty of the world and demonstrating beauty in their own choices. And so must we.

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