What Do You Pledge Your Sacred Honor To? | The View From Above

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1:29Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

2:07As the founders signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew that this wasn't some painless petition. This wasn't some minor political stand. No, they knew as they wrote that they were mutually pledging their life, fortune, and sacred honor. It was a cause they were willing to give everything for, even die for. This idea of sacred honor, of full commitment, is worth considering today here on Memorial Day as we honor and think about those men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Because here in the modern world, it's never been easier to jump on a bandwagon with a hashtag or post a picture.

2:47It's never been easier to spout off on this argument or that one. It's also never been more common to declare oneself a victim of cancel culture or of persecution when one undergoes even the slightest consequences for their actions. People stormed the United States Capitol because they were angry about losing a free and fair election. And even so, they tried to invoke the mantle of the founders. Not only were they wrong and evil, but then they whined like babies when they were maced by officers who really were pledging their lives to defend democracy. The Stoics knew about pledging one's life, liberty, and sacred honor.

3:28Thrasia and Helvidius, as I tell in Lives of the Stoics, they gave everything in their defiance of Nero. Cato committed everything to preserve the Roman Republic. Rutilius Rufus lost his job, his home, his standing in Rome, rather than participate in corruption. They didn't take these stands lightly, nor did they attach themselves frivolously to whatever the mob was angry about at the moment. The question for you today and always is what do you pledge your sacred honor to? What are you fighting for? Are you aware of the costs? Are you fully committed? This is not something to be done lightly. Honor matters.

4:08You should listen to our interview with Tamler Summers. But it also matters what you make a matter of honor. Fight on. Fight hard. Fight for the right things. Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Be good. Be well. Be safe.

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5:37The View from Above. This week's entry from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflections on the art of living. It's our companion to the Daily Stoic. You know, it is a journal, but there's a lot of writing in it. I mean, there's a weekly meditation, there's a conclusion, an intro. It's like 20 ,000 words. I do kind of think about it as a book I wrote. And each week we read here the week's entry, so you can listen to it and hopefully it can influence your journaling in whatever form you decide to write down and think about your thoughts. As Epictetus says, every day and night, keep thoughts like these at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them.

6:17And so today's entry is about taking the view from above. The way to escape petty concerns and the worries of daily existence requires taking some time and getting what the Stoics like to call the view from above. This was something Marcus Aurelius reminded himself to do regularly. He had learned from Heraclitus that everything in the world was constantly changing and that remembering this can eliminate so many stresses and concerns. So this week, don't just look at what you're dealing with in your life up close. Try to see it from far away too. Try to describe what another larger perspective would look like of your problems, of your worries, and of your obsessions.

6:56And Marcus Aurelius quotes here from Plato. He says how beautifully Plato put it, whenever you want to talk about people, it's best to take a bird's eye view and see everything all at once of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings, and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets, all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites. This is from Meditations 748. Watch the stars in their courses and imagine yourself running alongside them, Marcus also says in meditations. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other, for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life.

7:40And then we have Heraclitus. He says, the cosmic order, the same for everyone, wasn't made by any god or human, but always was and always will be, an eternal fire kindled in measures and extinguished in measures. Look, it's easy when you're thinking about something, when you're dealing with something, when you're way deep in something for it to feel like the most important thing in the world, for it to feel unprecedented, for it to feel overwhelmingly big. But when you zoom out, when you're in an airplane and you look down and you see these enormous fields or these whole cities, or you even see the town.

8:21Sometimes when I'm flying in Austin, I can see the road I drive to get to my house and I could see my tiny little house, you know, it just shrinks everything down into its proper proportion, which is to say it makes it really, really small. Because we are really, really small. We are ants. You know, you look at ants on an ant mound fighting over, you know, little seeds and tiny things, and it's easy to think, oh, these silly little creatures, but that's us. We are them. We are tiny. And by taking this view from above, thinking of it with this perspective is really, really important. And it cuts you down to size.

9:01It's crazy to think, if you haven't seen the blue marble photo, it's actually, this is the icon on the back of our Sympathia medallion. It's crazy to think no human was able to see Earth from a distance until the 1970s, right? The highest perspective we could get was from a mountain, you know, like 10 or 15 ,000 feet or whatever. It wasn't until relatively recently, like when your parents were kids, if you're my age, that we were even able to truly see our own planet from a distance. But Edgar Mitchell talks about this, one of the astronauts, he talks about this feeling you get in space when you see the earth from a distance.

9:42And he talks about how immediately clarifying it is, how immediately you feel a deep connection, a profound connection to your fellow humans, how all your petty, silly concerns go away and all you want to do is help to be of service, to be good, to focus on what matters. And this is what Marcus is trying to do 2 ,000 years ago, when it was a dream that human beings would ever enter space. He's even then imagining himself along the stars. He's trying to wash away the dust of earthly life. He's trying to get perspective. Well, look, you have the benefit of doing that. You can get in an airplane.

10:20You can look at, you know, the satellite view on Google Maps. You can recall your memory of the heights that you've been to, looking down from the Empire State Building or that tower in Dubai, if you've ever been there. You know, you have the ability to take Plato's view literally and figuratively in a way that the Stoics would have never imagined. And yet here we are tweeting about nonsense, fighting over nonsense, acting like those silly ants that we think we're so much better than. Take Plato's view. Get some perspective today. Also look at history. Just think about Marcus Aurelius and what people were concerned about now.

10:59And 2 ,000 years distant, the perspective that it gives us and what people will be thinking about of this very moment, 2 ,000 years from now. This is so humbling and so important. You've got to do it. Check it out. Take Plato's view, and hopefully you'll be calmer and wiser when I talk to you next week.

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