This is Your Chief Task

0:00Ryan Holiday: So we live on Halloween Street and we go crazy over Halloween decorations. And we're having to do it twice this year because someone stole a bunch of our Halloween decorations. I don't blame them. We have awesome Halloween decorations. We actually got a bunch of them from Wayfair. Wayfair delivers high quality customer trusted products for your home so you can host and celebrate without the stress. So if you're in an arms race with your neighbor about who can have the scariest, biggest Halloween stuff, coolest, prettiest, most awesome Christmas lights, well, Wayfair is the place for you. Wayfair has thousands of products across every style and budget, whether simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom for the holiday season.

0:45Ryan Holiday: My favorite thing about shopping about Wayfair is the reviews. You know, you buy stuff online sometimes and then you get it and it's way smaller than it looked or it's garbage. You know, you want to see real photos from real people so you know what you're actually buying. When refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:24The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we have control over and what we don't. Epictetus said, The chief task in life is simply this, to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own. Well, today we are calling on you to perform your chief task in life. You don't control the dark money that has flooded politics.

1:59You don't control the mediocre or awful candidates out there. You don't control that more than 50 % of the population doesn't bother voting. You don't control the gerrymandering and the voter suppression. You don't control who ultimately gets elected. But the act of casting a ballot is in your control. You control whether you engage in the democratic process. And the Stoics are explicit on this point. The philosopher, they say, is obligated to contribute to the polis, to participate in politics. And this is actually the essential difference between the Epicureans and the Stoics. Seneca says that Epicurus would say that a wise man will not engage in public affairs except in an emergency, whereas Zeno says he will engage in public affairs unless something prevents him.

2:43While it's hard to argue with the statistics that any individual's vote makes a difference, think about how dangerous it would be when that logic is extrapolated out. Almost no difference is made by the individual who decides to do the right thing, to do an act of kindness, to insist on the truth, when a falsehood is easier, to be a good parent, to care about the quality of their work. Is that a reason to be a liar, a cheat, an asshole, a bad parent, or a poor craftsman? Of course not. And imagine what the world would look like if everyone insisted it was. A better world is built action by action, Marcus Aurelius said, vote by vote.

3:20We vote, we do good things, not because it has a noticeable or significant impact on the world, but because it is our duty. We make our tiny contribution to the common good today, in the next election, in every election. We perform our chief task in life today, tomorrow, and every day.

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