Who Will You Emulate?

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.

1:09but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since.

1:48On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

2:25Who will you emulate? No one did it better. No one did more for the historical record. Without Cicero, much of the Stoic canon would have been lost. We are lucky that this great and articulate mind of antiquity spent so much time with the Stoic texts, it is through him that some of the best Stoic wisdom was preserved. Cato, on the other hand, hardly wrote anything down. He didn't provide us with any dialogues or essays. He hardly talked about Stoicism at all. Yet we are far luckier for his contributions to the philosophy because he showed us what a Stoic was supposed to do. In Lives of the Stoics, I am fascinated by this contrast, the two biggest contemporary Stoic philosophers.

3:16They were friends and rivals, colleagues and opponents, but their biggest divergence came not in terms of policy, but in how they lived. Cicero was a fantastic writer, but he was also preposterously ambitious in vain. He was enormously wealthy through rather dubious means. And during the vexing political dilemmas of his time, he often chose self-preservation over principle. Cato, on the other hand, was not a particularly good writer, and few if any of his speeches survive. But his character, it spoke loud enough to make up for it. He was brave. He was unbending. He was unwavering in his commitment to justice and virtue.

3:58And so which in the end is the greater contribution? Which is the greater example? Neither man was perfect, but they do present us with distinct paths. Which will we choose, words or deeds? preserving this philosophy on the page or embodying it in practice. The world needs both, of course. But if we had to choose, we'd take the latter over the former any day.

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