You Can Get Rid of It | The Present Is All We Possess

0:00Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14It's a timeless problem, rich or poor, old or young, married or single, successful or struggling, modern or ancient. What people do is we accumulate stuff. We accumulate, accumulate, accumulate until our homes, our cars, our minds and our schedules are cluttered. In meditations, Mark Surrealist jokes about people whose abundance leaves their owner with no place to shit. And that's just the physical stuff. People also accumulate problems and grudges and anxieties and opinions, piles and piles and piles of them. Our mental load grows and grows. It builds slowly until we feel overwhelmed, stuck, and weighed down.

0:58And there is only one way out, ruthlessly decluttering. We have to eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. We have to get rid of stuff, get rid of our baggage, let go of beliefs, let go of worries, let go of people. We have to stop buying and stop saying yes. We must free ourselves from the weight of excess, shed what's unnecessary and clear away what is holding us down.

1:34Who likes bugs? Not me. I guess my wife does. My kids sometimes like bugs, but I don't like bugs in my house, right? I don't like them around my food. I don't like them crawling on me. I don't like bugs. And the problem is you see one bug and then you ignore it. And all of a sudden you got hundreds of bugs and you got an infestation. If you are looking for DIY pest control, check out today's sponsor. That's Pesty. They're making protecting your home from unwanted pests super simple. With Pesty, you can get started at$35 a treatment and get a customized plan based on your location, bugs, and climate.

2:10They send you everything you need. Pro-grade pesticide, that's the same stuff the pros use. They give you a sprayer, they give you a mixing bag, gloves, and instructions, and you can complete the whole thing in less than 10 minutes. My wife loves bugs, which she also loves are animals, and so she's always worried that killing the bugs will kill the animals. Well, Pesti pesticides are fully registered and have been used in hospitals and schools all over the country. And you can try Pesti totally risk-free with their 100 % bug-free guarantee or your money back. If the bugs don't go away, you get a free refund.

2:37Bugs hate to see you coming with Pesti. Just go to Pesti.com slash Doek for an extra 10 % off your order. That's P-E-S-T-I-E dot com slash doig for an extra 10 % off. Today's sponsor is Chime, the fee-free banking app changing the way people bank. Chime isn't just another banking app. They unlock smarter banking for everyday people with products like MyPay, giving you access to up to$500 of your paycheck anytime. It can help you get paid two days early with their direct deposit. There's no overdraft fees, minimum balance fees, or monthly fees. And plus, Chime makes your everyday spending work harder by delivering real rewards and financial progress.

3:18And they just launched the Chime card. It's a cashback card that helps you build credit with your own money. And this is the kind of thing I wish was around when I was younger. It seems like a great way to build credit, which is intimidating, but as you know, very, very important. Chime is not just smarter banking. It's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking free for free. And it takes just a few minutes to sign up. you head over to chime.com slash stoic. That's chime.com slash stoic. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services, a secured Chime Visa credit card, and MyPay line of credit provided by the Bancor Bank NA or Stride Bank NA.

3:51MyPay eligibility requirements apply, and credit limit ranges$20 to$500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com slash fees info. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only. Otherwise, 1.00 % APY applies. No min balance required. Chime card on-time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms.

4:09Present is all we possess. And today's quote is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 214. So pretty early in meditations, but it's one of the great quotes from the book. He says, were you to live 3 ,000 years or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living. and no one ever lives a life other than the one they are losing. The longest and the shortest then amount to the same, for the present moment lasts the same for all. And as all anyone possesses, no one can lose either the past or the future, for how can someone be deprived of what's not theirs?

4:53Today notice how often you look for more, that is, wanting the past to be more than what it was, different, better, still here, etc. Or wanting the future to unfold exactly as you expect, with hardly a thought as to how that might affect other people. When you do this, you're neglecting the present moment. Talk about ungrateful. There's a saying attributed to Bill Keane, the cartoonist, worth remembering. Yesterday is the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present. This present is in our possession, but it has an expiration date. A quickly approaching one.

5:33If you enjoy all of it, it will be enough. It can last a whole lifetime. I had two thoughts. I mean, obviously I wrote The Daily Stoic, but I was thinking sometimes when I read them out loud to you guys, I go, oh, I like that. Maybe I'd tweak this. Here's what I would add. I just had this experience going back through the obstacles away. And there's just little things that I've picked up since then that I would add. And when I hear, oh, maybe I'd add this or that. I put it down on the note cards. There's two little things, actually three. I'll give you two. The first two come from poems by William Blake.

6:10He says, he who binds himself to a joy does the winged life destroy. He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise. And then the other one is from a longer poem, Auguries of Innocence, one of my favorites. But he says, to see a world and a grain of sand and a heaven and a wildflower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. It's this idea that, you know, the present is all that there is, but the present is so, so much. And then my favorite, I've talked about my love of the singer Bon Iver. I'm pulling this up so I don't mess it up because his lyrics are famously sort of enigmatic, but one of my favorite Bon Iver songs is Blood Bank.

7:05Actually, we played it at my wedding, I think. Either when I walked down and then I waited for my wife, I think that's when we played it. I may have been playing the whole intro, I forget, but I remember it's one of the songs we picked. But he says, Then the snow started falling, we were stuck out in your car. You were rubbing both my hands, chewing on a candy bar. You said, ain't this just like the present? To be showing up like this. As the moon waned to crescent, we started to kiss. Anyways, I'm getting a little outside of Stoicism here, I guess, getting pretty poetic. But what I like about both of those is they're just sort of showing the infinite, the mystery, the wonderfulness of the present, right?

7:51We skip over it because we want what's next. We're worried about what's next and we don't want what's next. Or we're dwelling on the past, ruminating on the past, regretting the past. And what we're ignoring is the beauty and the wonderfulness and the mystery and the absurdity and the joy and the fun and the ordinariness of the moment that we're in right now. And when we slow down, when we embrace it, when we show up for it, when we're in it, we get that. I have a big chapter on being present and stillness is the key. I talk about Marina Abramovich and her presentation, The Artist is Present, where she just sat there and just was there, not doing anything, not working, not on her phone, she was just there for hours and hours and hours and people came and sat in front of her.

8:44And it was overwhelming and emotional and transcendent. It was the kind of things that Blake was talking about and Bon Iver was talking about. It just was wonderful. And that's what the present is. Even when the world is falling apart, even when what we know is coming up next is not great, think about what the year could hold for us, the direction things are going. but as I play with my kids or I brush their hair or I was just in the swimming pool and I was looking up at the stars, they go, man, this is wonderful. I'm just going to be here in this, at this moment, soak it in. That's what Seneca talks about.

9:30Let me give you this other quote. I know I'm just quoting a bunch today, but it's one of my favorite quotes from Seneca. He says, snatch the pleasures your children bring. Let your children in turn find delight in you and drain joy to the dregs without delay. No promise has been given you for this night, he says. No, even that's too long. No promise has been given even for this hour. But this minute, the present you're in, however, whatever time span you're going to define the present, that has been given to you. You're in it right now. So actually be in it. Be in all of it. Be all the way in it.

10:11That's today's somewhat rambling message, and I'll leave you there.

10:33been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

11:03Macaroni masterpieces are made, and little moments turn into lasting memories. With the Blue Cash Preferred card, you can get 6 % cash back at U.S. supermarkets. So you can bring home the flavors that bring everyone together. We did say everyone. Make the special moments even more rewarding. Learn more at americanexpress.com slash explore dash bcp. Terms and cash back cap apply with Blue Cash Preferred. Work moves fast. Every email, report, and proposal counts. That's where Grammarly comes in. It's your one place to think, write, and finish. Grammarly's AI agents help you find natural phrasing, fine-tuned tone, and confidently write wherever you work.

11:45It's the premier writing tool that 93 % of users trust to get more work done. In a world of generic AI, don't sound like everyone else. With Grammarly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at grammarly.com.