Yes, This Is How It Is | The Obstacle Is The Way

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1:52Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

2:31Yes, this is how it is. Nearly every day was a terror. People died of easily curable diseases. People starved to death. People were clapped into slavery. Wars broke out, fought literally to the knife, where the losers were executed alongside civilian populations, their cities razed to the ground. Seneca was exiled. Marcus Aurelius buried his own children. Epictetus was tortured, leaving him disabled. for life. Yet somehow they wrote and spoke a philosophy that had within it a cheerfulness and a love and lofty words about meaning and purpose. How did they even get out of bed in the morning, let alone smile?

3:14There is a great lyric in the Florence and the Machine song, Free, that expresses this very bafflement.

3:39The answer to that is basically, yeah, that is how it is, how it's always been and always will be. People are awful. For some, cruelty is the point. Things are hard, things go wrong, people hurt, people die. We don't control that. We do control whether we keep going. We control whether we let

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5:54The obstacle is the way. This is the June 30th entry in the Daily Stoic, of course, also referencing the title of my first book on Stoicism, which it struck me, is now how many years? Eight years old? Yeah, it's unbelievable to me. but let's get into today's let's get into today's quote because we have the fuller quote here from mark surrealist this is people don't know this quote that i derive the obstacles away from comes from meditations 520 mark surrealist says while it's true that someone can impede our actions they can't impede our intentions and our attitudes which have the power of being conditional and adaptable for the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its actions into a means of achieving it.

6:46That which is an impediment to action is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way. And I will give you the Hayes translation as well, because I just love it. I actually think there's a really good translation. I'm a big fan of Pierre Hadeau and his book, The Inner Citadel, which I carry at the Painted Porch, we'll link to in today's episode. But Hadeau does his own translation of meditations, which has not been published except for the excerpts in the book, and there's a really good one inside the inner citadel, which you should read. But here's Hayes' rendering of the same passage, Meditations 520.

7:24In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and to put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us, like sun and wind and animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions, because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. I just love that passage, and I'll give you what I say in the Daily Stoic. Today, things will happen that will be contrary to your plans.

8:06If not today, then certainly tomorrow. And as a result of these obstacles, you will not be able to do what you planned. That is not as bad as it seems because your mind is infinitely elastic and adaptable. You have the power to use the stoic exercise of turning obstacles upside down, which takes one negative circumstance and uses it as an opportunity to practice an unintended virtue or form of excellence. Something prevents you from getting to your destination on time, then this is a chance to practice patience. If an employee makes an expensive mistake, then this is a chance to teach a valuable lesson.

8:41If a computer glitch erases your work, then it is a chance to start over with a clean slate. If someone hurts you, it is a chance to practice forgiveness. If something is hard, it is a chance to get stronger. Try this line of thinking and see if there is a situation in which one could not find some virtue to practice or derive some benefit. The truth is there isn't one. Every impediment can advance action in some form or another. I think a couple of things here. I'm not saying that some terrible thing, awful, unfortunate, tragic event that happened is just wonderful. It's that the nature of that event presents within it opportunities to be great.

9:24Take the last couple of years. No one would choose this. It's tragic. It's unfortunate. It's been ghastly in the immensity of the destruction with which it has wrought. But I have tried to focus on my family. I have tried to focus on being more community-minded. I've tried to focus on my stillness. I've tried to focus on improving my work habits. I've tried to focus on being present. I've tried to adjust my news habits. My marriage is better. I opened this bookstore, right? I have improved in innumerable ways. If you could ask me, if you said, Ryan, you got to give all that back up. You have to give all that back, but there won't be a pandemic.

10:06Of course, I would say, yes, of course, there's other ways to do it. But the thing happened, and it is a chance to step up, to grow, to change, to practice different virtues, right? That's what the obstacle is the way means. It's not that every negative thing is positive. It's that there is a chance to practice positive traits in response to the things that have happened. But second, if you notice the full quote from Marcus, and the obstacle is the way I'm really talking about all forms of obstacles, but Marcus is specifically talking about difficult people. He's saying difficult people are a chance to practice these virtues, that when someone is frustrating or mean or stupid or annoying or dishonest or cruel or aggressive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

10:50These are opportunities to call from yourself positive virtues, patience, kindness, forgiveness, you know, creativity, et cetera. You got to use that situation. So that's what the obstacle is the way means to me. That's why I have it tattooed here on my left arm. That's why we make the challenge coin. By the way, I don't know if you know this, but if you liked the obstacles the way you want to give it as gift, we have a leather bound edition, which you can check out in the Daily Stoics store or pick up the painted porch. But the point is, this is the philosophy with which I try to live my life.

11:27Stuff happens. How do we grow from it? How do we improve from it? How do we use it as an opportunity to be better? I have this little thing that I actually wrote to myself in 2020. I said, 2020 is a test. Will it make you a better person or a worse one? That's the part of it you decide, right i i had no idea that the pandemic would run all the way through 2020 and 2021 and it's we'd be back in 2022 all i knew was i was going to become a better person as a result of it could kill me right uh it could not be appreciated uh it could be all you know it could be all number of things but i control that i controlled what i did in response of it to it and that's what you control always that's what the obstacle is the way means that's what marcus is saying and as it happens there's also a zen expression the obstacle is the path the obstacle is the way the impediment to action advances action what stands in the way becomes the way don't forget it and of course check out the leather bound at store.dailystoic.com and we have a really cool uh challenge coin you can carry with you too.

12:39Actually, and if I remember correctly, the book comes with a challenge coin. So you can get two for one there.

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