We Are All Trying This | Train To Let Go Of What's Not Yours

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.

0:55We are all trying this. Seneca wasn't perfect. He struggled, as all humans do, with inconsistencies between his philosophy and his actions. He was ungodly wealthy. He was ungodly wealthy. And you know, he worked for Nero. So why should we listen to him? Why did Lucilius, his friend and correspondent, take his advice seriously? As it happened, the two had an exchange about this very issue. Seneca quotes Lucilius, writing to him, asking, How is it that you are advising me? Have you already advised yourself? Have you gotten yourself straightened out? And Seneca replies, I am not such a hypocrite as to offer cures when I am sick myself.

1:36No, he says, I am lying in the same ward. as it were, conversing with you about our common ailment and sharing remedies. So listen to me as if I were talking to myself. I am letting you into my private room, giving myself instructions while you are standing by. Seneca wasn't writing from a sage-like place of superiority. No, he was writing as a fellow traveler, someone in the trenches of life, wrestling with the same struggles as everyone else. C.S. Lewis said he wrote for the same reasons. He said, I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself. It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can.

2:21The fellow pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago that he has forgotten. I write as one amateur to another, talking about difficulties I have met or lights I have gained. This is the essence of Seneca's letters, Marcus's meditations, and Epictetus's discourses. It's also how I hope you read and listen to what I talk about in Daily Stoic. None of us are all-knowing experts looking down from a pedestal. No, we, like the ancient Stoics, are fellow students, half a step ahead, walking the same path, trying our best to learn and grow together.

3:11Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Baskerville County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

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6:13Train to let go of what's not yours. This is the November 24th entry in the Daily Stoic. We've got a nice big passage from Epictetus' discourses today. Whenever you experience the pangs of losing something, don't treat it like a part of yourself, but as a breakable glass, so when it falls, you will remember that and won't be troubled. So too, whenever you kiss your child or sibling or friend, don't layer on top of that the experience of all the things you might wish, but hold them back and stop them, just as those who might ride behind triumphant generals remind them that they are mortal. In the same way, remind yourself that your precious one isn't one of your possessions, just something given for now, but not forever.

6:55That's Epictetus' Discourses 324. As it happens, actually, at a Roman triumph, the majority of the public would have their eyes glued to the victorious general at the front, one of the most coveted spots during Roman times. Only a few would notice the aid in the back, right behind the commander, whispering into his ear, Remember thou art mortal. What a reminder to hear at the peak of glory and victory. In our own lives, we can train to be that whisper. When there is something we prize or something that we love, we can whisper to ourselves that it is fragile and mortal and not truly ours. No matter how strong or invincible something feels, it never is.

7:34We must remind ourselves that it can break, can die, can leave us. Loss is one of our deepest fears. Ignorance and pretending don't make things better or stronger. They just mean the loss will be all the more jarring when it occurs. There's a Zen story about a guy who has a beautiful cup, and he says to himself over and over and over again, the cup is already broken, the cup is already broken, the cup is already broken. And then, of course, when it does break, he's not surprised. I think this is what Epictetus is saying on a couple of levels. One is just reminding yourself that when you're triumphant, when you're successful, when you're at the top of the world, it never lasts, right?

8:12Seneca being a profound example of this, top of the world, exiled, top of the world, exiled, top of the world, executed, right? This is how it goes. It doesn't last. It never does. Your run, the bestseller list, in my case, eventually it comes to an end. Your time in the NFL comes to an end. Your time selling real estate in the bull market, it comes to an end. It always does. Your youth comes to an end, right? All things come to an end. And so realizing that this is just this thing given to you for now, and you should enjoy it and be present for it and appreciate it, but never lose sight of the fact that it is already broken.

8:51It is already gone. It's already in the process of leaving or falling apart. Entropy is working on it in this very moment. Now, the next part of this, the harder part, is realizing that this isn't just true for status or accomplishment or momentum or whatever, or obsessions, but also for people. Professor Scott Galloway told me this, and I've written about it before, but he was talking about how you're constantly losing your kids, right? They're a four-year-old for one day, then they're four-year-olds in one day. As they are getting older, you are losing who they were, right? They were a baby for so long, a toddler for so long, preteen for so long, a teenager for so long, in your house for so long.

9:33And most tragically, as Marcus Aurelius feels almost incomprehensibly, you don't get them forever at all, right? Just as they don't get you forever at all. And we have to remind ourselves, as Epictetus says, that our precious one is not a possession. They are a gift that we have temporarily, ephemerally, that we are losing not just day to day, but also permanently, all at once as well. Hopefully in a long time, but we cannot say that for certain. And so to take them for granted, to feel entitled to them, to mistreat them, this is a profound sacrilege. And we have to avoid that. And one of the ways we do it is by reminding ourselves of that ephemerality.

10:24We have to do this. We have to do it regularly. We have to do it consistently. We have to do it as a practice. We have to say to ourselves, remember thou art mortal. We have to say to ourselves, the cup is already broken. It's already gone. You have it now, but not forever. Loss is a real fear because it's painful. Grief accompanies it and so many other painful things accompany it, but it is there. and no amount of wishing otherwise makes it not the case, right? No amount of accomplishment or achievement makes you less mortal. You are mortal. You always have been. And so is everyone and everything you've ever been connected to.

11:04So let's live and act and treat people accordingly. And let's do it before it's too late.

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