True Freedom Requires This | Two Tasks

0:00Ryan Holiday: So I have a bunch of traveling I'm doing through the end of the year on Daily Stoic Live Tour. I just got back from San Diego. I like to stay in the places that I'm staying. I like to book places on Airbnb so I can be like a local. I not only do some of my best writing, but I learn about things that I wouldn't have known otherwise. When I was just in San Diego, I took a walk along the water. I bumped into someone who recognized me and they told me about their favorite local bookstore, which was like two blocks from where I was staying. And I never would have known about it if it wasn't for that encounter.

0:30Ryan Holiday: It was cool to me to think that I have helped facilitate that experience for many, many people coming to Austin over the years. The first house that I bought in Austin when my wife and I first moved here, we would list it on Airbnb. And it helped me make the transition from my corporate life to being a full-time writer. So if you're going to be away, you should maybe think about listing your place on Airbnb. It can be a great way to earn extra cash while you travel. It can offset the cost of your trip or maybe even go towards whatever you're doing next. If you've got travel coming up, check out Airbnb.

1:00Ryan Holiday: Your home might be worth more than you think, and you can find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:22Epictetus was born into slavery. This would have been a profoundly painful experience that left many scars and many disadvantages. His 30 years in bondage left him with a limp for the rest of his life, courtesy of a sadistic owner who tortured him. In Rome at that time, many people believed that only free people were capable of being educated. But the indisputable truth that Epictetus saw every day in the moral disorder and dysfunction of Nero's court, where his master served as a high-profile secretary, was that it was, in fact, the opposite. Only the educated, he said, were free. And this is something that Seneca points out about the same period in Rome, how profoundly unfree many of the richest and most powerful people are.

2:14And this is true 20-odd centuries later. Most people are enslaved and controlled and directed by their ignorance, their impulses, their temper, their desires and delusions. What Epictetus came to understand is that wisdom is freedom from the things that have enslaved and controlled and directed people for all time, from ignorance, from stupid opinions, from immature emotions and childish impulses, from desires and delusions, from bitterness and frustration and resentment. That's the point of wisdom, he said, to argue less, to rage less, to be upset less, to enjoy, Epictetus said, a smooth flow of life.

2:54But the Stoics also believed that wisdom is something we have to work for, not something that we're given. It didn't matter then if you were a slave like Epictetus or raised as royalty like Marcus Aurelius. wisdom was something you had to earn. And how did you earn it? Through hard work, through reading and thinking and reflecting, through mentors and teachers, through painful trial and error, through opening yourself to experiences and knowledge outside of your comfort zone.

3:23Ryan Holiday: I think the one thing we can say very clearly about wisdom is that you're not born with it, right? You can be born smart, but you can't be born wise. Wisdom is something you earn.

3:42Two Tasks What, then, makes a person free from hindrance and self-determining? For wealth doesn't, neither does high office, state, or kingdom. Rather, something else must be found. In the case of living, it is the knowledge of how to live. Epictetus, Discourses, Book 4, Chapter 1, Verses 62-64 You have two essential tasks in life, to be a good person and to pursue the occupation

4:21Ryan Holiday: you love. Everything else is a waste of energy and a squandering of your potential. How does one do that? Okay, that is a tougher question. but the philosophy we see from the Stoics makes it simple enough. Say no to distractions, to destructive emotions, to outside pressure. Ask yourself, what is it that only I can do? What is the best use of my limited time on this planet? Try to do the right thing when the situation calls for it. Treat other people the way you would hope to be treated. And understand that every small choice in tiny matter is an opportunity to practice these larger principles.

5:04Ryan Holiday: That's it. That's what goes into the most important skill of all, how to live. I would say two things. Maybe Epictetus wouldn't have agreed that you have to pursue the occupation that you love because he lived in a time where people had a lot less control. Maybe he would have firmly put that in the camp of things that are not up to us. Marcus Reus didn't seem to think he had much say over whether he was emperor or not. But of course, we've made some progress now. You don't have to follow in your father's footsteps another link in a long chain of accountants or police officers or politicians or notaries or whatever.

5:44Ryan Holiday: You can do what you want to do. At the same time, I don't know if Epictetus thought he had that much control because he didn't. He was enslaved. He eventually found his freedom. He did find what he was good at, what he was meant to do. So maybe he would have agreed. We do know there's something from Epictetus and Musonius Rufus where they say basically like you're talking to a young kid who says, you know, my father won't let me study philosophy. And he says, you know, if you really wanted to study philosophy, your father can't possibly prevent you from doing that. I think that's true. Anyways, that's an advice, a little mantra I try to remind myself.

6:21Ryan Holiday: Be a good person. Do what you love. Focus on what's right. And look, if you don't lose track of time, if you don't forget what day it is, maybe you don't like what you do that much, right? If time feels like it's going by interminably slow, you're probably focused on the wrong things. This is an entry from the Daily Stoic 10th Anniversary Edition, which is out now, has been updated and informed by a decade of writing and reading about the Stoics. More than 60 new translations. It's got new meditations, new stories, an expanded glossary, a bunch of awesome stuff. I think you'll really like it. You can grab all that at dailystoic.com slash ds10.

7:03Ryan Holiday: I'll link to that in today's show notes. Thanks to everyone who supported the book over the years. dailystoic.com slash ds10.