This Is What You Do | What Will Prosperity Reveal?

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1:05Welcome 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.

1:46This is what you do. Life is hard. Life is painful. We lose things. We lose people. Certainly the Stoics knew this. Seneca was exiled. Epictetus experienced slavery. Marcus Aurelius endured a crippling plague, political corruption and backstabbing, having to bury too many of his children. But they kept going. They didn't give in. They fought to be, as Marcus wrote in meditations, the person that philosophy tried to make them, even though they had every reason to give in, to grow bitter, to be hurt. This was a takeaway that the great director Francis Ford Coppola recently shared when he was on the Daily Stoic podcast.

2:29By the way, an incredible perk of my life to be able to interview him. Actually, I think it was the first podcast he's ever done. As a longtime student of philosophy, his new movie Megalopolis, which hits theaters this weekend, is directly inspired by Cicero and the Catalan conspiracy. Coppola said it was Marcus who guided him through a recent tragedy in his own life. I lost this wife of 60 years, and it's sort of devastating, but there was a Marcus Aurelius quote that really lifted me, which was that if you lose, I don't know it literally, but you'll know it. If you lose a loved one, honor her, and in a sense, try to be more like her, and then she'll live in your actions.

3:14And so my wife was very good, and I just try to be like her. And when I try to be like her, I, you know, like she was very, if someone was alone or sick or something, she'd call them up and be comforting to them. And I'm not like that, you know. So I started to do that. People that I know, some guys my age who have no grandchildren are just there and call them up and say, how are you? And being like her. And they were so pleased. Oh, it's so kind. And I keep my wife in my life with Marcus Aurelius' advice by trying to be more like her. In fact, this is also something that Seneca talks about in his beautiful consolation essays.

4:00We don't have the power to bring the people that we love back. But by choosing to embody the virtues of loved ones we have lost, we not only carry forward their spirit in our own actions, we transform our pain and suffering into meaning and purpose. It's a hopeful reminder that even in the face of life's harshest blows, we can still find grace and meaning. We can still be the kind of person that philosophy tries to make us. And like I said, this was Francis's first ever podcast. It's an incredible story. I sort of tell how that came to be at the beginning of the episodes. I'll let you listen to that.

4:41But he talks about why he considers himself an Epicurean and a Stoic and what guidance the ancients like Marcus and Aeschylus can provide us today. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'll link to that in today's show notes. You can click over and check it out, or you can watch it on YouTube as well. Thanks to Francis for coming on and enjoy.

5:06What will prosperity reveal? This is the September 27th entry in the Daily Stoic. 366 meditations on perseverance, wisdom, and the art of living. You can grab a premium leather edition. You can grab signed editions at store.dailystoic.com. Today's quote comes to us from Seneca's Moral Letters 104. for. For even peace itself will supply more reason for worry, Seneca says. Not even safe circumstances will bring you confidence once your mind has been shocked, once it gets into the habit of blind panic. It can't provide for its own safety. For it doesn't really avoid danger, it just runs away. Yet we are exposed to greater danger with our backs turned.

5:49There's an old proverb that money doesn't change people, it just makes them more of who they are. Robert Caro has written that power doesn't corrupt, it reveals. In some ways, prosperity, financial and personal, is the same way. If your mind has developed a certain cast, the habit of panicking in Seneca's example, it won't matter how good things get for you. You're still primed for panic. Your mind will still find things to worry about, and you'll still find, and you'll still be miserable. Perhaps even more so, because now you have more to lose. This is why it's so foolish to hope for good fortune.

6:22If you were to hope for one thing, you should hope for the strength of character that's able to thrive in good fortune, or better work for that kind of character and confidence. Consider every action and every thought. Think of them as building blocks of your own indestructible character. Then work to make each one strong and significant in its own right. You know, when I think about the things that make me anxious, when I think about all the different parts of my life that have been defined by anxiety, you know what they all have in common? they all have me in common, right? I'm anxious when I travel.

6:57I'm anxious when I'm sitting in my house and have nothing to do. Shouldn't I be doing something? I'm anxious right before I'm supposed to get on stage. And I'm anxious, you know, insert 500 other scenarios. The common variable is me. In one of his great passages, Marcus Rios goes, today I escaped my anxiety. How great. And he goes, wait, no, no, no, I didn't escape it. I must have discarded it because it was within me. We're the cause of the anxiety. The airport doesn't give you anxiety. The pandemic doesn't give you anxiety. Driving doesn't give you anxiety. Your mother-in-law doesn't give you anxiety.

7:34Something happening to your kids doesn't give you anxiety. You give those things the anxiety. It's from within you. It's your racing thoughts. We think we want everything to be simple and good and to go our way. And then we'll feel good and things will be safe and calm, but they won't be because our mind is still there. We will find something. We bring our problems with us. You know, that other great line, wherever you go, there you are. That's what Seneca is saying. Like you're not going to escape it because you are the problem. So if you want to feel better, if you want to feel calmer, right, you can't run away from things.

8:13you got to use this thing, you got to deal with it. And I think it's important too, right? Because a lot of people, when we think of Stoicism, we think of Stoicism as a philosophy for adversity, which it is. But then you look at the lives of the Stoics, and although they did experience all sorts of adversity and difficulty, they also experienced extreme success and prosperity, right? Marcus Aurelius almost has a harder time than Epictetus. Like, we don't want to be too glib about this, but you can tell in meditations that Marcus Aurelius is still struggling. Even though Mark Sturulus has everything you could possibly think you could want.

8:45He lives the fantasy life. Everyone thinks they want to be king. And then you get it. You get power and prosperity and luxury and fame, all these things. And, you know, there's still stuff to be anxious and worried about, still stuff to panic about, still there's all that is there. You are the common variable. So you got to do the work on yourself. That's the message in the entry. And that's the message for all time. Epictetus is saying, look, I found freedom inside this oppression. And Mark Stabilis is saying, I found all this freedom a bit oppressive, right? On both ends, on all parts of the spectrum, we feel and experience these things.

9:30So we got to do the work. So what is the prosperity going to reveal for you? I'll give you an example. I took an extra year on Right Thing Right Now. I wanted extra time. I wanted more family time. I didn't want to be so stressed out by writing. But you know what I did? I found a lot of things to be busy about. And then when I wasn't busy, you know what I found? Stuff that I'd been neglecting in my personal life, in my relationships, in my health, you know, whatever, it kind of came bubbling up to the surface. So then I had to deal with that. So there's never going to be smooth sailing. It's never going to be easy.

10:02You can't ever run away from this stuff. The common variable is you. Wherever you go, there you are. So you got to do this work on yourself. What will the prosperity that you seek, that you hope for, that you dream of, that you want, what is becoming emperor going to reveal in and about you? And how can you deal with it now? How can you deal with it before? So that whether you are cursed with adversity, blessed with prosperity, whatever it is, you can handle it, right? That's what stoicism really is about. It's about being able to handle extreme outcomes on either end of the spectrum. That's what we're working for.

10:43That's what stoicism is. That's where I'll leave you today. Be well, everyone.

10:51Thanks 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.

11:15We'll see you next time.

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