Words Count For Nothing | Take A Walk

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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.

2:08Today, the United States celebrates Juneteenth, the commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in America. 157 years ago, two years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and nearly 90 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Army troops deployed to Texas, the only state of the Confederacy still with institutional slavery. The people of Texas are informed, ordered a Union general, in accordance with a proclamation from the executive of the United States, all slaves are free. There's no question that that military order deserves celebration. It asserted absolute equality and began the liberation of hundreds of thousands of human beings.

2:55And Marcus Aurelius would write in meditations that his stoic role models taught him to conceive of a society of equal laws governed by equality of statute and speech, and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. It's as beautiful a sentence as any written by Thomas Jefferson, but of course, a long way from Epictetus' personal experience. This kind of freedom that Marcus was talking about would have been something inconceivable to the early Stoics, who themselves lived in a slave society and tragically did very little to stop it. Like Jefferson's writings, Marcus Aurelius' passage was just that, an idea, not a reality.

3:37In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt would remind his fellow citizens of the critical distinction between words and deeds. In name, we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he said, but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865. And he said, words count for nothing except insofar as they represent acts. This is true everywhere. Or as the Latin expression goes, acta non verba, Deeds, not words. It's wonderful to celebrate these principles from the Stoics and the founders. It's wonderful to note the moments of historical progress like Juneteenth. But we have to remember that beautiful language pales in comparison to beautiful acts.

4:26We have to turn these words, these ideas, into deeds. Can't just talk about them. We have to be about them. and not living up to them or doing something about them, as was the case with slavery in Rome and America, is ugly. Marcus knew this but fell short, damning himself with his own words in meditations that you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also. We must make sure today that we are not guilty the same. And this idea of fighting for freedom, of asserting one's rightful dignity in a cruel or unjust world, that is the journey of Epictetus.

5:08You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact. GiveWell has spent the last 18 years researching global health and poverty alleviation, and they direct funding to the highest impact opportunities.

5:47Over 150 ,000 donors have already trusted GiveWell to give more than$2.5 billion over the last several years, and research suggests that these donations will save over 300 ,000 lives. I myself am one of those donors. I donate to GiveWell every year. It means a lot to me. And you can find all their research and recommendations on their site for free. And thanks to the donors that sponsor this research, GiveWell doesn't take a cut from your tax-deductible donation to their recommended funds. And if this is your first gift through GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to$100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last.

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6:42Take a walk. Seneca believed that we should take frequent wandering walks because constant work will fracture our minds. As a writer, he would have agreed with the novelist Helen Dunmore, a problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk. So take some good time this week to take some walks and watch the dullness and feebleness depart. Enjoy the scenery. Enjoy being away from your work. Make them part of your morning and evening writing routine. Return with a stimulated mind that's ready to journal about and follow the philosophy you know. You think that it's taking a break, but really you end up smarter and clearer than you were when you left.

7:27And that's from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. And as Seneca says, we should take wandering walks so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed by the open air and deep breathing. That's in his essay on tranquility of mind. But Marcus Aurelius says, pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop, praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth. That's Meditations 448. And then Seneca again in On Tranquility of Mind. The mind must be given relaxation.

8:03It will rise improved and sharper after a good break. Just as rich fields must not be forced, for they will quickly lose their fertility if never given a break, so constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind. But it regains its powers if it is set free and relaxed for a while. Constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul. I actually just posted this the other day. I was saying there's no problem so bad that taking a walk can't at least help you solve a little bit of it. And I also feel like I've never regretted deciding to get up and take a walk.

8:41My morning routine is built around it. As I've said before, I don't touch my phone in the morning. I strap my kids in the stroller and we go for a walk. It's about a mile and a half to the mailboxes at the end of the road, little PO boxes for everyone there. And we've done this hundreds and hundreds of times now. It occurred to me that since my kids were born, I've probably walked, ridden, or run several thousand miles with them. And this distance we covered, it's not just good for health. It's not just getting out and getting sunlight, but it's refreshing. it's quality time together. It's time not spent struggling with some work thing.

9:26And yet I almost invariably return with something to write down with something I remembered I need to do during the day with some sense of purpose and energy for the day. And during the pandemic, we got so into these walks, not only do I do the one in the morning, then I sometimes do walks on phone calls during the day around the Daily Stoic offices and the Painted Porch bookstore here in Bastrop, Texas. I love walking through these little southern towns. It's always beautiful and shady because they planted the trees so long ago. But then we usually go for a walk after dinner. Sometimes our kids take a popsicle or, you know, my wife and I have a piece of chocolate.

10:07During April and May, we like to pick blackberries on the walk, but we just, we walk around. Sometimes we watch the sun come down. We watch the deer run, or we look at the cows or pet the donkeys. Sometimes we bring the donkeys carrots, although most of the time our kids eat the carrots before we get there. But the point is this time outside is wonderful, and it's philosophical, and it's refreshing, and it's one of the most important things that I do. So I hope you will take some walks today. It's one of the best exercises you can do. It's also one of the best forms of exercise for your mind. So take a walk.

10:45The Stoics demand it.

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