You Can’t Be Afraid To Get Up There | Marcus Aurelius' Life Story

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1:02Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

1:28You can't be afraid to get up there. In ancient Rome, Crassus was celebrated as a master order, mesmerizing audiences with his eloquence and commanding presence. But beneath the surface of his confident exterior, Crassus battled intense fear and self-doubt before every speech, a struggle that few ever saw. As a young lawyer, Crassus' anxiety was so overwhelming that a judge once delayed a hearing out of compassion, recognizing how absolutely disheartened and incapacitated he was. This kind of fear is something many of us know all too well, the paralyzing urge to flee from the spotlight, to avoid judgment and failure, to not make a fool of ourselves in front of people.

2:11This was a crossroads moment for the man. He could have decided that this was not the field for him. he could have developed a lifelong phobia of speaking, could have let that fear, which surely never went away, win. Instead, Crassus chose to develop himself into one of the great lawyers of his time. He showed up to the next hearing and pushed through, a process he repeated over and over again. Over the years, he faced big crowds, tough juries, and many less forgiving judges. In time, he mastered his craft to the point where few could have imagined his humiliating origins. This is not the courage of rushing into battle, but it's courage all the same.

2:47In fact, to many people, speaking in front of an audience is a thought more terrifying than death. There's a reason that the Stoics held up courage as a key virtue, because they believed we were obligated to participate in public life, and that this meant putting ourselves out there, risking disapproval and embarrassment, facing that self-consciousness and doubt that we all have. Whatever it is that we want to do in life demands this courage. We can't let introversion be an excuse. We can't let our fears win. We have to push ourselves. We have to put ourselves out there. We have to beat back stage fright, self-doubt, and anxiety.

3:22This is the only way to become slowly and steadily confident of our capacities. It's the only way we can do our duty, citizens, craftsmen, and parents. I think I can say that from experience. This is a slightly different recording quality. And you can notice my voice is a little scratchy because I just gave a speech 45 minutes ago at the U.S. Naval Academy here in Annapolis where I'm recording this from my hotel room. I just did a speech on the virtue of justice. I've been doing this series over the last three years here. And I just got back from Australia where I did. I spoke in front of 2 ,000 people in Sydney and 2 ,000 people in Melbourne.

4:00And this has been tough for me over the years because nobody becomes a writer because they think it's a way to talk to large groups of people in person. It's the opposite. I feel like I was drawn to write because I was more comfortable there. It was just me and the page and the keyboard. But over the last couple of years, I've had to develop as a speaker. It's hard and scary each time, but I think I'm getting better. And that's kind of what courage is, right? It's a muscle that you build. The talk I gave at the Naval Academy, that was only for the plebs just coming in this year. But the ones in Sydney and in Melbourne, that was open to the public.

4:34And I'm doing a couple more of those. It's not normally on my talks. Normally, my talks are more like for private groups or sports teams or at conferences. So if you want to come see me talk, you want to see me get over some of my own stage fright, and you want to ask questions and hang out a bit, I would love to see you. I'm doing events in London, Rotterdam and Dublin in early November. And then after that, Vancouver and Toronto. This is all basically the 12th through the 20th. So it's going to be a busy November for me. But I'm excited to come see you. And you can grab tickets at ryanholiday.net slash tour.

5:06I would love to see you. Thanks to everyone, by the way, who came out to see me in Melbourne and Sydney. It was a huge treat to go out to Australia. And I'm looking forward to going to all these other countries and seeing you. So grab tickets, ryanholiday.net slash tour. both the events in Australia sold out so these will sell out also so grab your tickets I'll see you all soon

5:32Since Plato it had been the dream of wise men that one day there might be such a thing as a philosopher king. This star born April 26 121 AD was named Marcus Annius Varus, and for all impossible expectations and responsibilities he would manage to prove himself worthy of all of it. The early days of the boy who would become Marcus Aurelius were defined by both loss and promise. His father Varus died when he was three. He was raised by his grandfathers who doted on him and who clearly showed him off at court. Even at an early age he developed a reputation for honesty. The Emperor Hadrian, sensing his potential, began to keep an eye on him.

6:20By the time Marcus was 10 or 11, he'd already taken to philosophy, dressing the part in humble, rough clothing and living with sober and restrained habits, even sleeping on the ground to toughen himself up. Marcus would write later about the character traits he tried to define himself by, which he called epithets for the self, and they were upright, modest, straightforward, sane, cooperative, disinterested. Hadrian, who never had a son and had begun to think of choosing a successor, must have sensed the commitment to those ideas in Marcus from boyhood on. He must have seen, as they hunted wild boar together, some combination of courage and calmness, compassion, and firmness.

7:04He must have seen something in his soul that Marcus likely could not even see himself because by Marcus's 17th birthday, Hadrian had begun planning something extraordinary. He was going to make Marcus Aurelius the emperor of Rome. On February 25th, 138 AD, Hadrian adopted an able and trustworthy 55-year-old administrator named Antoninus Pius on the condition that he in turn adopt Marcus Aurelius. By the time Hadrian died a few months later, destiny was set. Marcus Aurelius was groomed for a position that only 15 people had ever held in Rome. He was to be made Caesar. Unlike most princes, Marcus did not yearn for power.

7:51We are told that when he learned he had been officially adopted by Hadrian, he was greatly saddened rather than overjoyed. Perhaps that's because he would have rather been a writer or a philosopher. Reservations are not the same as cowardice, however. The most confident leaders, the best ones, are often worried that they won't do a good enough job. They go in knowing it will not be easy, but they do proceed. And Marcus, around this time, would dream a dream that he had shoulders made of ivory. To him, it was a sign he could do this. It wasn't just the headwind of power that Marcus faced in life.

8:30From his letters, we know he had recurring painful health problems. He became a father at age 26, a transformative and trying experience for any man. In Marcus's case, though, fate was almost unbelievably cruel. He and his wife, Faustina, would have 13 children. Only five would survive into adulthood. His reign from 161 to 180 was marked by the Antonine Plague, a global pandemic that originated in the Far East, spread mercilessly across borders, and claimed the lives of at least 5 million people over 15 years. And he faced some 19 years of wars at the borders. But these external things don't deter a Stoic.

9:15Marcus believed that plagues and war could only threaten our life. What we need to protect is our character, how we act within these wars and plagues and life's other setbacks. To abandon character, that's real evil. Consider the first action that Marcus Aurelius took in 161 AD when his adopted father Antoninus Pius died. Marcus Aurelius found himself in an even more complex situation. He had an adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, who had even closer ties to Hadrian's legacy. What ought he do? What would you do? Marcus Aurelius cut this Gordian knot with effortlessness and grace. He named his adoptive brother Lucius Verus co-emperor.

10:00The first thing Marcus Aurelius did with absolute power was voluntarily share half of it, but this was just one of several such gestures that defined Marcus Aurelius's reign. When the Antonine Plague hit Rome and the streets were littered with bodies and danger hung in the air, no one would have faulted him for fleeing the city. In fact, that might have been a more prudent course of action. Instead, Marcus stayed, never showing fear, reassuring the people by his very presence that he did not value his safety more than the responsibilities of his office. Later, when due to the ravages of the plagues and those endless wars, Rome's treasury was exhausted, Marcus Aurelius was once again faced with the choice of doing things the easy way or the hard way.

10:45He could have levied high taxes. He could have looted the provinces. He could have kicked the can down the road, running up bills his successors would have to deal with. Instead, Marcus took all the imperial ornaments to the forum and sold them for gold. As for us, he once said to the Senate about his family, we are so far from possessing anything of our own that even the house in which we live is yours. His dictum in life and in leadership was simple and straightforward. Do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. No better expression or embodiment of stoicism is found in his line and in his living than waste no more time talking about what a good man is like.

11:27Be one. At the core of Marcus Aurelius's power as a philosopher and as a philosopher king seems to have been a pretty simple exercise that he must have heard about in Seneca's writings and then in Epictetus's. The morning or the evening review. Every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand, Epictetus had said. Write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them. So much of what we know about Marcus Aurelius's philosophical thinking comes from the fact that for years he did that. He was constantly jotting down reminders and aphorisms of stoic thinking to himself. The title Meditations, which dates to 167 AD, translates as to himself.

12:09This captures the essence of the book perfectly, for Marcus was truly writing for himself, as anyone who has read Meditations can easily feel. It is obvious in retrospect that Marcus used the pages of his journal to calm himself, to quiet his active mind, to get to the place of apotheia, the absence of passions. He would have loved to have spent all his time philosophizing, but it was not to be. So the few minutes he stole in his tent on campaign, or even in his seat at the Coliseum as the gladiators fought below, he savored as opportunities for reflection. There is no theme that appears more in Marcus's writing than death.

12:51Perhaps it was his own health issues that made him so acutely aware of his mortality, but there were other sources. Since he did not flee Rome as many other wealthy citizens did during the plague, Marcus woke up in a surreal-smelling city, a mixture of the putrid smell of dead bodies and the sweet aroma of incense. Think of yourself as dead, he writes. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly. On another page, he says you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. We're told that Marcus was quite sick toward the end, far away from home on the Germanic battlefields near modern-day Vienna.

13:29Even with his own end moments away, he was still teaching, trying to be a philosopher, particularly to his friends who were bereft with grief. Why do you weep for me, Marcus asked them, instead of thinking about the pestilence and about death, which is the common lot to us all. Then, with the dignity of a man who had practiced for this moment many times, he said, If you now grant me leave to go, I bid you farewell and pass on before. He would survive a day or so more. Perhaps it was in these last few moments, weak in body but still strong in will, that he jotted down the last words that appear in his meditations, a reminder to himself about staying true to his philosophy.

14:11So make your exit with grace the same grace shown to you. Finally, on March 17th, 180, at age 58, he covered his head to go to sleep and never woke up. Rome and us, her descendants, would never see such greatness again.

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