When The Statues Still Had Paint On Them | The Real Power You Have

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.

0:56When the statues still had paint on them, it's easy to forget that they did not live in classical Athens or ancient Rome. The ancients did not live in the past at all. They lived, obviously, in the present. Greece was not a quaint and quiet place where people wore cute togas. It was the center of the world, a bustling cultural and economic capital, where cutting-edge ideas were debated and welcomed by society. The Rome of Marcus Aurelius was majestic and mighty. He did not walk through ruins. No, an imposing coliseum roared with enormous crowds. the harbors bristled with masks of an empire's worth of ships.

1:39He didn't look up at white marble statues missing noses and hands in some antiseptic museum. No, as we discussed recently on an episode of the Daily Stoic podcast with John Avalon, the statues still had paint on them, bright reds, deep blues, gold accents. They were bold, almost lifelike, meant to awe and inspire, not sit quietly behind glass. This is how it is for every moment in time, every era. We all live in an unfolding present where things are uncertain, where they could go in any direction. No one lives in a painting or a photograph or a book. We live in the messy world, an indifferent world.

2:21But for all this, we also live in a world where we have agency, where we, like our ancestors, get to make decisions that shape the future for coming generations. History isn't something that other people live through and we get to read about. We all live through history, and we can all make it if we choose. And the only way to do that is to embrace this moment that is in front of us, to focus on what we can control and respond to obstacles and difficult people with virtue. That's what Marcus Aurelius did. That's what Epictetus did. That's what Cato did. And that's what you and we all must do right now in this fleeting, vivid present that will one day be remembered as history.

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5:33The real power you have. That's what we're journaling about in the Daily Stoic Journal. That's where this little meditation comes from. There is fleeting power and there is real power. Fleeting power can be taken away while real power is in our minds and our bones. The former tends to be along the lines of wealth, fame, high position, and the leverage that all those things give us over others. The Stoics thought that this kind of power was inferior to the real power that each person possesses, the power of our minds to reason and make judgments and choices based on the real worth of things. You can have both kinds of power too, but only if you keep the first kind of power subject to the kind of power that the Stoics actually cared about.

6:20So Chrysippus, who I talk about in Lives of the Stoics as well, he says, This is the very thing which makes up the virtue of the happy person in a well-flowing life, when the affairs of life are in every way tuned to the harmony between the individual divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe. Then Epictetus says, Don't trust in your reputation, your money, or position, but in the strength that is yours, namely your judgments about the things that you control and don't control. For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful.

6:55That's Discourses 3.26. And then Marcus Aurelius in Meditations 12.19 says, Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine that causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire? Or something like that. I think the fact that we can talk about Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus as peers, even though one was utterly powerless and the other possessed all the worldly power there was, is an amazing illustration of what Epictetus is saying when he says, for this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful.

7:41And in fact, you know, Epictetus works in Nero's court. He is a slave of one of Nero's high-ranking officials or secretaries. And in Epictetus's writing, we get a sense, we get him really realizing and trying to communicate later to his students that like he realized that as a slave, he had a better life than many of these people, that he was freer. He watches at one point somebody sucking up to Nero's cobbler, like the guy that makes Nero's shoes is getting flattery because the person wants to get closer to the emperor. And Epictetus realizes that that person who's doing that is, of course freer and richer and more privileged than Epictetus in essentially every way, but is then voluntarily debasing themselves, is a slave to their need for power or recognition or money or whatever it is, that person is willingly a slave.

8:43And Seneca in that same court talks about this. He says, you know, nothing is more shameful than this sort of form of voluntary slavery. Nothing is more shameful than these people who are addicted to a mistress, to their estates, to being, you know, the most famous or popular person in Rome. And so I just, I think it is a powerful statement that amongst the Stoics, some of the most powerful and influential and inspiring were the least powerful and recognized. Cleanthes is a manual laborer, but he's considered a peer of Hercules because of his ability to endure things, because of his judgments, because of his incorruptibility.

9:24Marcus Aurelius was not the greatest conqueror of the Roman emperors, but he's one of the most impressive because he conquered himself, right? He possessed the throne. The throne did not possess him. And so this idea of being free of chasing the real power, which is power over one's wants, power over one's opinions, power over one's actions, power over those impulses that might drive you to do this or that. That's real power. There's a line in one of Steven Pressfield's books where Alexander the Great is taunting this philosopher and he says, what have you done? I've conquered the world. And philosopher says, I have conquered the need to conquer the world.

10:14And I think Pressfield is saying the same thing the Stoics are saying, the same thing that Epictetus is saying. He's probably drawing on Diogenes the Cynic, but that there is a level of power above the level of raw power that people chase and debase themselves with. So that's your question, your thing to think about today. What kind of power are you chasing? What are you pursuing? are you really as powerful as you think you are, or does power have power over you?

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