Today, Let This Be The Answer

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1:04Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

1:30On this day 22 years ago, Brian Sweeney was a passenger trapped on hijacked United Airlines Flight 175. He knew something was wrong, but he could not have fully understood that he and so many others were about to be murdered in one of the most hateful and deranged acts of terrorism in history. But in those final few short minutes of his life, he managed to leave a beautiful message on his wife's voicemail. Hey, Jules, this is Brian. Listen, on an airplane, that's been hijacked. Things don't go well. I'm looking good. I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to be good. I'm so happy this time.

2:08Same to my parents and everybody. I just totally love you, and I'll see you later. Bye, babe. Bye, Paul. In book one of Meditations, where Marcus Aurelius catalogs the most important things he learned throughout his life. He said that he learned from a teacher named Sextus to be free of passion, yet full of love. Imagine the terror of that moment. Yet when you hear Brian's voice coming through the phone, there's not a trace of fear. It's free of passion, free of anger, free of despair, free of everything, yet full of love. Because everything else has been stripped away, rendered irrelevant and insignificant.

2:50Pure love, Seneca said, Careless of all other things kindles the soul, makes us selfless, it emboldens us, makes us courageous, inspires us to be strong, instills us with purpose. It doesn't always win, as Sweeney's tragic death reminds us, but it is an antidote to terror and cruelty and evil. It is the thing that keeps going, that lives on after us, that brings meaning and comfort, even in the worst of situations. So today, on the anniversary of 9-11, let us, as Marcus Aurelius said and Sweeney was, let us be full of love. Let us tell those we love that we totally love them. Let us bring love to every situation we face.

3:34Indeed, there is almost no situation in which passion helps, but almost every situation is made better when it is full of love.

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