You Can Do Something About This | Train To Let Go Of What’s Not Yours

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2:05Welcome 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.

2:42You can do something about this. Marcus Aurelius would have recognized the feeling that you feel right now. So would Seneca and Cato and many of the other Stoics. The Romans, like Americans, loved a good feast. They love wine. They love breaking bread with family. We know this because their writings abound with descriptions of overflowing tables and dinners that went long into the night. But you know what doesn't appear in their writings very often, just as it doesn't occur often enough to us? How some people don't know this feeling at all. In fact, they are more familiar with the opposite of it, hunger.

3:17While some of us sit here with the Thanksgiving hangover, they're feeling the rumblings of an empty stomach. You're wondering if you'll ever eat again, and they are in a very different way thinking the same thing. Nearly one in eight households in the United States is experiencing food insecurity, and more than 13 million children aren't getting enough food to eat. More than 780 million people globally go to bed on an empty stomach. And you might be thinking, so what? Stoicism is about focusing on what's in my control. Why Why should I let some slow-moving humanitarian crisis kill my sleepy tryptophan vibe?

3:53Well, because, as Marcus Aurelius wrote, those suffering humans are us and we are them. To allow harm to come to them through indifference and through callousness is to allow harm to come to ourselves. It's why the most magnificent moment of Marcus's reign was the day he decided to sell off the palace furnishings to keep Rome going, to help those in need. Hierocles was a Roman stoic who spoke of circles of concern. Our first concern, he said, is to our mind, but beyond this is our concern for our bodies, for our immediate family, then our extended family. Like concentric rings, these circles were followed by our concern for our community, for our city, for our country, our empire, our world.

4:31The work of philosophy, he said, was to draw this outer concern inward, to learn how to care as much as possible for as many people as possible, to do as much good for them as possible. The Stoics said we have to have this affinity for our fellow human beings and that this is our obligation, our duty, they said. It's to help them, to serve them, to illustrate those virtues of courage and justice toward and for and through them. So today, on a day when people will be lining up to get a deal on a flat screen television or gorging on leftovers while they post photos on social media, let us instead put our energy towards helping the less fortunate.

5:10We don't control a lot in this world, but we can keep people from going hungry. We can alleviate someone's fear or worry. We can put food on their table. And better yet, we can do this together. Daily Stoic, for now the fourth year, is raising money for Feeding America. We've donated the first$30 ,000, and we'd like your help in getting to our goal of$300 ,000, which would provide 3 million meals for families across the country. Together, we can make this small debt and a big problem. We can't alleviate everyone's suffering or struggle, but for the people we can help, the difference is huge. So let's do it.

5:44Let's be good Stoics today together. I'm putting my money where my mouth is, and I'm just asking you to put in a dollar, $2,$3, whatever, just a little bit. Each dollar you put in raises enough money to feed 10 people or provide 10 meals, which is awesome. So just go to dailystoic.com slash feeding to make your donation, and I'll link to it in today's show notes. I'd love to see this number get super high, folks. and I'll feel great together.

6:15Train to let go of what's not yours. This is the November 24th entry in the Daily Stoic. I've got a nice big passage from Epictetus' discourses today. Whenever you experience the pangs of losing something, don't treat it like a part of yourself, but as a breakable glass. So when it falls, you will remember that and won't be troubled. So too, whenever you kiss your child or sibling or friend, don't layer on top of that the experience of all the things you might wish, but hold them back and stop them, just as those who might ride behind triumphant generals remind them that they are mortal. In the same way, remind yourself that your precious one isn't one of your possessions, just something given for now, but not forever.

6:57That's Epictetus' Discourses 324. As it happens, actually, at a Roman triumph, the majority of the public would have their eyes glued to the victorious general at the front, one of the most coveted spots during Roman times. Only a few would notice the aide in the back, right behind the commander, whispering into his ear, Remember thou art mortal. What a reminder to hear at the peak of glory and victory. In our own lives, we can train to be that whisper. when there is something we prize or something that we love. We can whisper to ourselves that it is fragile and mortal and not truly ours. No matter how strong or invincible something feels, it never is.

7:38We must remind ourselves that it can break, can die, can leave us. Loss is one of our deepest fears. Ignorance and pretending don't make things better or stronger. They just mean the loss will be all the more jarring when it occurs. There's a Zen story about a guy who has a beautiful cup, and he says to himself over and over and over again, the cup is already broken, the cup is already broken, the cup is already broken. And then, of course, when it does break, he's not surprised. I think this is what Epictetus is saying on a couple of levels. One is just reminding yourself that when you're triumphant, when you're successful, when you're at the top of the world, it never lasts, right?

8:18Seneca being a profound example of this, top of the world, exiled, top of the world, exiled, top of the world, executed, right? This is how it goes. It doesn't last. It never does. Your run, the bestseller list, in my case, eventually it comes to an end. Your time in the NFL comes to an end. Your time selling real estate in the bull market, it. It comes to an end. It always does. Your youth comes to an end, right? All things come to an end. And so realizing that this is just this thing given to you for now, and you should enjoy it and be present for it and appreciate it, but never lose sight of the fact that it is already broken.

8:59It is already gone. It's already in the process of leaving or falling apart. Entropy is working on it in this very moment. Now, the next part of this, the harder part, is realizing that this isn't just true for status or accomplishment or momentum or whatever, or possessions, but also for people. Professor Scott Galloway told me this, and I've written about it before, but he was talking about how you're constantly losing your kids, right? They're a four-year-old for one day, then they're four-year-olds in one day, right? As they are getting older, you are losing who they were, right? They were a baby for so long, a toddler for so long, a preteen for so long, a teenager for so long, in your house for so long.

9:44And most tragically, as Marcus Aurelius feels almost incomprehensibly, you don't get them forever at all, right? Just as they don't get you forever at all. And we have to remind ourselves, as Epictetus says, that our precious one is not a possession. They are a gift that we have temporarily, ephemerally, that we are losing not just day to day, but also permanently, all at once as well, hopefully in a long time, but we cannot say that for certain. And so to take them for granted, to feel entitled to them, to mistreat them, this is a profound sacrilege. And we have to avoid that. And one of the ways we do it is by reminding ourselves of that ephemerality.

10:38We have to do this. We have to do it regularly. We have to do it consistently. We have to do it as a practice. We have to say to ourselves, remember thou art mortal. We have to say to ourselves, the cup is already broken. it's already gone you have it now but not forever loss is is a real fear because it's painful grief accompanies it uh and so many other painful things accompany it but but it is there and no amount of wishing otherwise makes it not the case right no amount of accomplishment or achievement makes you less mortal you are mortal you always have been and so is everyone and everything you've ever been connected to.

11:23So let's live and act and treat people accordingly. And let's do it before it's too late.

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