What Do You See? | Ask Ds

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2:15Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

2:53What do you see? A man walks through a field of flowing grain. The grass is bending low under its own weight. The wind blows softly on a cold day. He looks and sees a small bird sitting on a branch, the steam rising off the ground behind it. The bird takes flight and he follows it with his eyes, smiling at the beauty of nature's inadvertence. But when the man turns, you can see that he is surrounded by darkness, uprooted trees and thick mud. An army marches to get behind thick, sharp palisades. Weapons of war are being prepared to do terrible damage. Within seconds, ferocious, ceaseless, and primal violence will erupt.

3:37You may recognize this description as the opening scene from the movie Gladiator. It's a fictionalized portrayal of the wars that Marcus Aurelius himself participated in. It also happens to be through the stoic character Maximus, a perfect illustration of the idea that how we choose to see things determines what they are. In the midst of such a desolate and awful place, Maximus is able to channel his idol Marcus Aurelius and find a few fleeting seconds of beauty and goodness. He's able to dye his soul with the color of his thoughts, to borrow another phrase from Marcus. Milton would later say that man can make a hell of heaven and a heaven of hell.

4:18That's what Maximus was doing, what Ridley Scott, the filmmaker, was showing that we are able to do. The perspective we take, the lens we look through, the subject we decide to focus the camera on, this is everything. Marcus Aurelius knew this firsthand, living through all those wars, as well as the devastating plague and so many other tragedies. His times featured all the things that depress and scare us today, and in almost every way, they were worse than what we are experiencing today. But he still managed to find beauty and peace and something to smile about. Certainly, you can do the same.

5:08Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. Thanks. You guys send in your questions to info at dailystoic.com. You're pressing questions about stoicism, about Marcus Aurelius, about Seneca, about me, about reading, whatever it is, you ask the questions, I do my best to answer. We put it up on the podcast. Got some cool questions for you. The Stoics talk about ignoring praise and jeers of doing what's right. But how would a Stoic response to someone who ignores the praise or jeers, but they're doing it to do the wrong thing? Isn't this a way to sort of be unethical? I think that's a great question.

5:47You know, I think at the core of Stoicism is the belief in virtue, the idea of doing the right thing. That's, obviously, there is a, that's hard to define. I feel like if there's a failing in the Stoics, there is no Stoic Ten Commandments, where it's like very clear what the Stoics thinks you should and shouldn't do. it's it's almost just sort of expected that we're we're to know what virtue is but there there is an argument to be made that that that like what stoic what stoicism could do is just make you a better sociopath like by by removing your you know your fears your worries caring what other people think it's just making you worse and i obviously that's not what the stoics intended there are certainly people you know we see people in the pickup community or you know there have been not good people in history and they're not good people now who are reading these, you know, sort of ideas and they're not using it to be better.

6:46But I think this is where the reading in Stoicism really becomes important because when you truly read Marcus Aurelius, he's not just saying, you know, ignore the praise and jeers so you can do whatever you want the way that a previous emperor like Nero or Tiberius acted, he's saying, don't listen to them so you can do what's good for all of Rome. So don't care about appearances so that way you're not distracted or tempted by money. He's like, don't care about impressing people so you don't need to be fooling around with beautiful women. He's trying to use this to get him closer to his moral code, to be closer to living in accordance with nature, as the Stoics say.

7:34He's trying to use this idea of pushing aside the crowd, the mob, as they called it in Rome, so he could focus on what he knew was true, what he knew was good, what he believed was ethical, what, you know, as he says, what's bad for the hive is bad for the bee, and what's bad for the bee is bad for the hive. He's thinking fundamentally about the common good, about serving the common good, about being of service, about helping people. And so he's not using that to be more selfish. He's actually trying to not be distracted or misled by the very human impulse of wanting sort of short-term approval, wanting to impress other people, wanting status or money or fame or legacy or recognition or credit.

8:23And he says, don't think about people's cheers or jeers, just do the right thing. He's saying, do the right thing because it's the right thing. Whether it's helping somebody, he's saying, help someone because you want to do it because they need it. He says, don't think about the third thing, which is getting credit for it. So fundamentally to me, what that idea of ignoring praise and criticism is about just not caring about credit, not caring about recognition, but instead focusing all that energy on doing the right thing for the right reasons. So I was in, I gave a talk in Bucharest, which was really cool.

9:04I'd never been to Romania. And then believe it or not, my Romanian publisher, which is called, they're called Seneca Publishing. They have a stoicism themed cafe called the Seneca Anti-Cafe in Bucharest, which I thought was amazing and really cool. Definitely check it out. And then, so I went from Bucharest to Budapest where I gave a TEDx talk and, and it occurred to me as I, I never really been to Budapest. I've been so fried. I was on book tour. I was like, isn't there like a Marcus Aurelius Budapest connection? And I, and it was like, oh yeah, he spent like years of his life there. I think it's a quincum.

9:41I'm terrible at pronouncing these words, but market, there was a Roman military camp outside Budapest on the Danube River. And that's where Marcus really spent like several months. They think he actually wrote a large chunk of meditations there. And so you could walk the streets of this Roman town. And it's just incredible. There is a public bath from a thermal underground spring that you can visit. It was closed when I was there, so I had to go to a different one that was only dating back to the 1600s. But you can take a steam bath in a hot spring that is the same water that Marcus Aurelius may have used 2 ,000 years ago.

10:26I just thought that was absolutely incredible. I know you're not supposed to, but I picked up a rock while I was there and I keep it on my desk now. But it's just amazing. There's a small museum there. there's Roman ruins. You don't think of the Roman Empire stretching as far as Hungary. You don't think you would see ruins of a Roman aqueduct next to a freeway in Budapest, but you can. And so I do think when we're traveling, the idea of seeking out some of these sites and walking through them and just imagining what was here, imagining our connection to the people that were here, realizing that people are going to walk through the ruins of our cities 2 ,000 years from now and experience a similar thing is a very stoic.

11:09It's a very meditative practice. It's very soothing and sort of rejuvenating, but also humbling at the same time. So it was really awesome. And I'm glad I got to do it. Got some cool questions for you. Wrote in with some not fun news. He said his house got broken into and he wanted to know about overcoming something like that. How do you bounce back from that? You don't feel good about it. So first off, I would say, sorry. I've been there. In 2013, I just bought my first house and I'd also bought an engagement ring for my wife, which I did not tell her about. And I put in a safe in our downstairs closet and we went out of town.

11:46And there were some Airbnb renters in our house and we got a call from them that while they were out, someone had broken into the house. They'd stolen everything. They trashed our couches. They'd torn things off the wall. They'd broken windows and they were in it long enough that they busted open the safe and stole the engagement ring that I was planning to propose to my wife with. So that was, you know, let's just say that was not fun. And that was not how I was planning to tell my wife that that's what we were doing. So the truth is, this is to say like shit happens, life is rough. And I think one of the things I took from that was like, it's easy to get, feel really soft, feel really protected, get kind of in a bubble of your own experience and just expect the life to be kind and amazing and everything you want.

12:39I think one of the things you realize from reading Marcus Aurelius is like, this guy had everything and life was still hard. I mean, to go to your point about getting broken into, there's a story from Epictetus about a thief breaking into his house and stealing a lamp. And what he takes from that, and I think this is the second thing, he goes like, look, you can only lose what you have. He says, tomorrow, I'm going to go out and buy a cheaper lamp. And that way, I'm not going to be as paranoid about it. So that was one of the things I took from the experience was like, not only had I gotten a little soft, a little vulnerable, I wasn't careful, but I also set myself up to be too attached to material items.

13:19And so I wanted to learn from the experience, be a little less attached, be a little less in my bubble. And then it, you know, it ended up being like, this is a story that my wife and I have. It's an experience actually, our wedding announcement, we were, we got selected. It was in the New York times and we got to tell that story and that wouldn't have happened had we had just like an ordinary getting engaged experience. And so like, how can you use this? That's what the obstacle is the way, the impediment to action advances action. As Marcus really says, everything that happens presents us an opportunity to practice a different virtue.

13:54That's what we want to do. That's what I'd urge you to think about. I'm really sorry that this happened. I wish everyone was nice. I wish we could leave our doors unlocked, but that's not the reality we live in. And that's unfortunate. But how are you going to toughen, you have a better, you'll be more successful toughening yourself up than you will hoping that nothing bad ever happens. So at the very least, if you come out of this a little stronger, a little wiser, a little more careful, and a little more aware that our possessions are ephemeral and can be taken from us, I think you'll be better.

14:27So that's another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. Thanks. Thanks to our sponsors. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Subscribe to the Daily Stoic podcast. Subscribe to the Daily Stoic email. That's at dailystoic.com. And of course, subscribe to us here on YouTube. Thanks. Talk soon.

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