Will You Understand Or Be Understood? | Ask DS

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2:11Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are 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. Thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you.

2:46Will you understand or be understood? There are very few people who feel completely understood. Starting from a young age, our parents didn't fully get us. Or maybe it was our teachers, or maybe there was some part of us apparently beyond the reach of our spouse or our peers. This is painful, and it's lonely, and it's rough. Epictetus said that there were some things that were up to us and some things that were not. While we can do our absolute best, articulating how we feel, speaking up to be heard, going to therapy, asking for help, being patient, being vulnerable. people, in the end, being understood is never going to be fully up to us.

3:23It's just not. By definition, it depends on other people. And other people are flawed and busy and sometimes very selfish. But if being understood is not in our control, there's something quite wonderful that is in our control, understanding. We can give what we didn't or haven't got, as we've written about over at Daily Dad. We can try to see people. We can try to really listen. Our own pain and our own loneliness has an upside. It taught us the value of being understood, how much it means, how even a little of it can go a long way. Instead of despairing, instead of turning inward because we haven't gotten all that we needed, what if we channeled that energy towards being a positive difference maker for others?

4:05Focus on what is up to you. Use this as a second chance. We can't always be understood, and certainly we haven't been, but we can always strive to understand.

4:27Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We're doing a Q &A today that's actually drawn from the Stoicism 101 course. I think it's one of the best courses we've done over at Daily Stoic. If you're looking to get introduced to stoicism, you want to take your study of it to the next level, you want to go back to basics, or you want to build a really good foundation of what stoicism is and how you can use it. That's what the course is about. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But this is drawing from one of the many Q &As we've done as part of the session. People got to come in and ask me a bunch of questions.

5:00We're talking about some of Marcus Aurelius' stuff about being tolerant with others and strict with yourself, that we can't hold people to standards that they never asked for, and how you sort of think about your friend, how a Stoic thinks about their friend group and how you try to be a positive influence. So that's where today's Q &A is coming from. It's just a selection. And I hope you join us in Stoicism 101. You can ask some of your own questions. I'll link to that in today's show notes or just type in Stoicism 101 in the Daily Stoic store. Hello. Hi. I've been listening to your podcast every morning for the last couple of months.

5:36And it's amazing. Thank you so much. for what you do. So I'm struggling with two concepts. What you call the obstacle is the way it's something that I can actually relate to and incorporate. So whatever it is, you make it part of your journey or whatever situation you're in. But then I heard you talking about the concept of a more fatty. That's something that is actually new to me. I've never heard of that before. and I'm actually struggling with that. It's like I can make the obstacle part of the way, but just get to the point to love the obstacle. It's really hard for me. Yeah, let me, there was something I just saw.

6:19Let me read this to you. Let me find it here. This is, I thought this was beautiful. I'm going to reference the Robin Waterfield translation we've been talking about, but let me find this here. This is Meditations 5.8. He says, there are two reasons then why you should gladly accept whatever happens to you. First, because the experience happened to you, was prescribed for you, was the product of a web somehow woven just for you way back in time, out of the most ancient causes. Second, because for the directing principle of the universe, even what happens to each of us as individuals plays a part in its advancement, perfection, and that by Zeus, its very preservation.

7:04So this is what Robin Waterfield says in his annotation. He says, because there is an unending chain of cause and effect since time began, what happens to you today has been ordained since the beginning of time. So I thought that was quite so when we think about Amor Fati, it's it's it's not just like, hey, I'm going to figure out a way to muddle through this and make the most of it. It's that think of everything that led up to where you are right now. Thousands of years of history. You know, you've got the planets behind you. Think of the Big Bang creating, you know, even this moment. So billions and billions of years of seemingly unrelated events were actually working in beautiful concert with each other to bring about what has just happened, even if that thing is tragic or frustrating or obnoxious or unraveling something that you yourself had worked very hard on.

8:03Right. So the Stoics did have this sense of like that there was some sort of higher power garden guiding things along, which I think is helpful to understand it. But but I to me, the idea is, hey, something led up to this. I'm not sure I am even capable of comprehending all of it. So I'm going to go with it. Right. I think that's part one. The other thing with this idea of so. So there's another part in meditations where Marcus says, look, a fire consumes what you throw in front of it. He says, but a small fire, like if you had a small flame and you just threw a log on top of it, it would put the fire out, right?

8:44It would squash it. But if it was a strong fire, it would turn that into fuel, right? So to me, the obstacle is the way or I'm just going to accept this. That's kind of like small fire, right? But Amor Fati is like this big fire. This is like, it doesn't matter what this is. I'm going to turn this into something that's great. Does that make sense? Makes sense. Thank you. Yeah. There's another one about that recent Mark Manson article that I think you've read. Yes. About how he's not as stoic and the overlap between stoicism and existentialism. Yeah. So I thought Mark's piece was good. He's a friend of mine.

9:32I love his stuff. I know we've had him on the podcast and I think we did a text interview or two before. So I love Mark. It's totally fine that we would disagree about some stuff. When I look at the existentialists versus the Stoics, to me, the pretty simple test is like, who did more for humanity, right? When I look at some of these modern schools, I see them as having some interesting questions, right? I think Camus is fascinating and poses some good questions. But to me, the deciding vote for the Stoics is that these were real people who did things in the real world. And if everyone was an existentialist, I'm not sure where that would leave us.

10:17Yeah, someone made the distinction here between pen and ink philosophers and practicing philosophers. And I think that's well said. Hey, Ryan. Hi. Question about routine and breaking out of it. This is something I kind of experienced last year, not having like going from kind of having an opportunity outside of the pandemic pre-lockdown to break routines. I'm very like routine and habit focused. So I was wondering, and I don't know, I'm trying to think of like stoic references to this about, you know, being able to seek out new things and kind of, you know, break out of your comfort zone, even if you're, you know, you're very consistent and all that.

11:00So totally. I think one of the problems with routine is that it can sort of become almost like dogma. It can make you very rigid and it can almost be like a form of OCD. You're like, this is the way I do things. This is how I prevent the world from collapsing. And then, you know, if I don't do this thing by seven o 'clock, like the whole world will end, which is obviously if the whole the point of routine is that it should make you more productive. and more resilient, not more fragile and more sort of dependent. So two things that have been helpful for me. One, having kids was great because it just sort of blows your life apart.

11:42And the idea that you're in control of the day sort of gets shattered very quickly. And one of the things that came out of that for me was the idea of like routines, plural versus routine. So like when I, and I guess I'd already figured this out, but it's like when I travel, I have a different routine than I do at home. At home, I sort of know how the day is likely to begin or end so I can sort of organize things accordingly. When I'm traveling, you know, usually you don't. So it's like, I know I have to say like run in the morning because I probably won't get time to do that in the afternoon.

12:19So I like the idea of having different routines that I sort of default to depending on how things go, right? So it's like, if your routine is like, Hey, this is what I do in the morning and it's weather dependent, obviously you have to have another routine if you wake up and it's snowing. So I think the idea of thinking about routines, plural has been good. Um, the other thing I might think about is just like, I remember I was reading about an NFL kicker who sort of, he was not only not superstitious, he was actively on guard from preventing superstitions from happening. So it's like If he wore a pair of socks and he had like a couple good games in a row, he would like get rid of those socks.

13:02So he didn't, so those didn't become his lucky socks. Right. And so I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes I try to think like, okay, what do I normally do as part of my routine? And now I'm going to do it deliberately the other way. So I don't become addicted to only having it my way. Like, um, I remember like, like for instance, like before I write, uh, or like give a talk, like I like to like sort of start the day, like showering and shaving because like, I just feel fresher that way. But, uh, what if the plane arrives, you know, what if I'm on a red eye flight and I have to go straight to the thing, right?

13:42Well, I won't have the opportunity to do that. So when that happens, I go, I'm practicing the opposite of the routine just to prove to myself that the routine doesn't actually matter. There is no superpower in, you know, touching, flipping the light switch on and off three times before I go in the room. That's just something in my head. You know what I mean? No, that totally makes sense. But great question.

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