This is What’s Really Important | Pretend Today Is The End

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.

0:55This is what's really important. We got together with family. We reminded ourselves what was important. We enjoyed the bounties of the earth. Perhaps when we took the rolls out of the oven, we noted, as Mark Surrealis did in meditations, the way the bread cracks open on top. A nod to nature's inadvertence. We counted our blessings and gave thanks. And then what did we do? The very next day, millions of us disregarded all of our appreciation for the good things we've been given in life, food, family, and friends, to lose ourselves in the frenzy of Black Friday. And now back in the office, more do the same with Cyber Monday deals.

1:40Instead of taking a minute to consider that not everyone is as fortunate as us, we're trying to save a fortune on a TV or a new phone or God knows what else. Meanwhile, the families already reeling from the rising costs of living and groceries, who had their benefits cut, who got laid off, who went hungry as SNAP funds were used as political leverage. What are they doing? just trying to get by, trying to make impossible, unthinkable decisions about how they're going to feed and take care of the people they love this holiday season. More than 47 million people in America are food insecure, including nearly 14 million children.

2:23And yet today, Cyber Monday, we'll spend billions of dollars shopping online. How quickly we traded presents for presents. traded being with family for fighting with strangers to get a better spot in line for more stuff we don't need, when there are people, children, who aren't having their basic needs met. It's crazy. What would the world look like if we took seriously the reminder Marcus Aurelius often gave himself, that we were put here for each other, to do good and to help each other? The great fortune of his life, he says at one point in meditations, is not just that he himself had never known serious want.

3:05It's that he had been lucky enough to always be able to give to those in need. If you've been blessed, be a blessing. Which is why for the sixth year now, here at Daily Stoic, we're inviting you to skip Cyber Monday and instead join us in helping people. You enjoyed a day of fullness, but not everyone knows that feeling. In fact, many of them are experiencing the exact opposite. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity and an obligation, and it's one that we can fulfill together. Last year, the Daily Stoic community came together with Feeding America and provided over 2.4 million meals. We didn't quite hit our goal of 3 million, but we're keeping that goal this year with the hopes that you can help get us there.

3:51Our overall goal is to raise$300 ,000. The Daily Stoic team put in the first$30 ,000, and every dollar you contribute provides 10 meals. So if we hit that goal, that will be 3 million meals. All you got to do is head over to dailystoic.com slash feeding, and together we can make a significant dent in a very big problem. So let's be good Stoics today and prove that we don't just talk about this philosophy, but live it. By the way, if you live outside the U.S. and you want to be involved, you can check out Action Against Hunger, which is a global humanitarian organization that fights against hunger across nearly 50 countries.

4:31Like I said, we're raising all that money at dailystoic.com slash feeding. It would mean a lot if you could make a difference. Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you're back in the office. Have a great week. Talk to you soon.

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6:53Pretend today is the end. Today's entry in the Daily Stoic, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. Seneca says, let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time. Live each day as if it's your last is a cliche. Plenty of people say it, but few actually do it. How reasonable would that be anyway? Surely Seneca isn't saying that we forsake laws and considerations to find some orgy to join because the world is ending.

7:37A better analogy would be a soldier about to leave on deployment, not knowing whether they'll return or not. What do they do? They get their affairs in order. They handle their business. They tell their children and their family that they love them. They don't have time for quarreling or petty matters. And then in the morning, they are ready to go, hoping to come back in one piece, but prepared for the possibility that they might not. Let us live today the same way. This is something that I wrestled with, right? Because I don't think the Stokes are saying live as if you will die tomorrow, right?

8:12In the sense that live as if it is certain that an asteroid is coming, that a nuclear missile has already been launched, that you're being euthanized in 24 hours. I think it's that that could happen is the way to think about it. You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. Marcus is saying you could leave life. Not that you will. The fact that you will, that you know for certain, it does make so many, many, many things not worth doing and pointless. It makes needing to plan for the future or even thinking about the future to be totally pointless and unnecessary.

8:57Obviously, Marcus, as a leader, as a ruler, as a parent, made decisions about the future all the time. He had to be. He would have been terrible had he not done that. It's thinking about the possibility, accepting the reality that tomorrow is not certain, that gives us, I think, the perspective that we need to make better decisions day to day. If I knew for certain that I wasn't going to live tomorrow, I would stop or even that I knew I wasn't going to be alive 10 years from now, I'd stop saving for retirement. I'd make a bunch of different decisions. But I could live into my 70s or 80s. And so I plan and save accordingly.

9:37Right. I just also, knowing that that might not happen, I don't leave things that are important to me that I want to do, how I want to live. I don't leave that until I retire. I take also as essential that I have to do the things that are important or interesting or exciting to me now before it's too late. And that is just a really important caveat to this whole memento mori thing. It's not memento mori, well, nothing matters. It's that memento more, you could leave life right now. So you have to make decisions accordingly. It's a helpful perspective that highlights the meaning of what's important, that highlights what's unimportant, as opposed to rendering everything meaningless or insignificant.

10:31We're not dancing because the world is coming to an end. That's to miss the point. And also to put you in a bad spot if it doesn't happen, right? So I just thought there's a reason this opens the month's meditation on mortality that is December of the Daily Stoic. It's really making this point because I think it's easy to forget. It's not nihilism. It's not little nothing matters. It's perspective. And the memento mori reminders that I have, whether it's the coin or the ring I've been wearing, things that give us the perspective that we're talking about here. And what I wanted to leave you all with today, can't believe it's December already.

11:15It seems insane. If there are changes you want to make, things, improvements you want to make in your life, things you want to do, do them now. Don't wait a month. Don't wait for New Year's. Do them now.

11:30Hey, 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 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.

12:10You hear that? That's not just a Toyota truck. That's the sound of no crowds. No alerts. No distractions. And no telling what you'll find next. You know, like a detour. So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour? Toyota trucks. 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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