You Meet Them Where They Are | When You Feel Lazy

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1:05Welcome 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.

1:46You meet them where they are. In 155 BC, Athens was hit with a crippling 500-talent fine by the rising superpower that was Rome. Unable to afford it, the leaders of Athens summoned the city-state's only weapon of defense, its philosophers. Diogenes of Babylon, then the head of the Stoic school, was dispatched, along with Carneades of the Academy and Citralouse of the Lyceum, to appeal the judgment through a series of lectures in Rome. Just a few years earlier, the Roman Senate had decreed an outright ban on philosophers, worried that the teachings of the Epicureans, skeptics, and cynics, each with their provocative questions, would undermine Roman values and traditions.

2:31Even Stoicism, which had yet to break out from obscurity and into the public arena, was viewed with suspicion. Carniades, a skeptic, spoke first and delivered two controversial lectures, one in praise of justice and another challenging the existence of justice and its practicality. He wanted to demonstrate the immense power of rhetoric, but instead confirmed to some Romans that philosophy was nothing more than sophistry. Cato the Elder, one of Rome's most sober and politically influential characters, he was so horrified that he demanded the philosophers be sent home before they could corrupt any more of the city's youth.

3:12Diogenes followed Carniades with discussions on stoic principles, such as cultivating personal virtue within oneself, the importance of justice and governance, and the power of reason. He spoke in a straightforward and frank manner, devoid of emotional manipulation or rhetoric. What struck the Romans most was his restraint and sobriety and his clear and practical ethics, well, they opened a door for Rome's elite to reconsider the value of philosophy and education. In fact, Cato the elder's great-grandson, Cato the younger, would eventually become one of the greatest students of Stoicism and went down in history for his ardent defense of Rome's old ways and its traditions.

3:52You could argue that it's because of Diogenes that we even know about Stoicism in the present day. He was the first Stoic to go beyond the Stoa, which means porch in the Athenian Agora, and he met audiences where they were in order to spread this philosophy, serving as a bridge between the early founders of Stoicism and its later Roman proponents. Without him introducing Stoicism to Rome, would Cato, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius be the examples that we cherish today? Perhaps not. And, you know, anytime I get on stage, it's Ryan, by the way, I try to remember that precedent, the example of Diogenes.

4:31Because look, you don't become a writer because you want to talk in front of large groups of people. As a writer, there's something comfortable and safe about the page. That's what drew you to it in the first place. You're safe there. You have all the time in the world to perfect your arguments. You don't risk criticism from the audience or risk the rush that Marcus Aurelius himself noted about being up there on the rostrum. But you can't hide on stage. Right away, in the moment, the audience lets you know what they think and feel about you. But at a certain point, I had to accept that my ego and my fears were prohibiting me from trying this difficult art.

5:10Just like Diogenes was willing to travel to Rome to spread stoicism, I had to be able to meet you, the audience, my fans, where you are if I really believed in this philosophy. That's why here at Daily Stoic, one of the things we work really hard on is trying to take my writing and make it work in these different mediums, YouTube, this podcast you're listening to, even social media. Not all of them are like naturally comfortable for me, but I have gotten better at challenging myself with them. And lately I've been doing more stuff on stage. I've been doing this tour. Instead of doing like private events, which I normally do, I've been on stage in front of you in audience sizes that frankly sort of blow me away and terrify me.

5:55Back in August in Sydney, I was in Sydney Town Hall and Melbourne Town Hall. So like 2000 people, it was insane. But it's a joy. It's a challenge to connect with you and share stoicism with you. And I feel like I'm continuing that tradition a little bit. And as it happens, I'm going back out on the road in November. In North America, I will be in Vancouver and Toronto. That's the 18th and 20th of November. But before that, I will be in Europe. I'm going to be in London on the 12th, Rotterdam on the 13th, and then back in Dublin on the 15th. I would love to see you there. I'll link to the tickets in today's show notes.

6:31You can grab it at ryanholiday.net. And you know what? I'll play a little chunk of that talk for you now just to give you a taste. Was Mark Smith talking about, you know, responding to the small ups and downs of life? I don't think so. I think it was something deeper than that. You know, some people who may be like that guy who couldn't like me very much, they said that Marcus Reus is depressing, that meditation is a little dark. And I would agree, and that's because Marcus Reus' life is fucking depressing. Like, to Marcus Reus' life was dark. This is a man who loses his father early on. He's thrust into politics, not something he sought or ever wanted.

7:16and what you told him breaks down weeping when he's told him someday he came, because you can think of all the bad things of history. Maybe it seems fun to be emperor, but it doesn't tend to go well for people who become emperor. And it turns out to be like one thing after another for this guy. Actually, an ancient historian, he lived at Mark Serrits' time, and said, Mark Serrits doesn't mean the good fortune he deserves. this whole vein is involved in a series of trouble. To which Marcus Williams would have said, a series of troubles, man, what the hell are you talking about? This has been tragedy after tragedy, heartbreak after heartbreak.

7:5820 years of peace and prosperity and stability just evaporate like the day he takes over. There's a historic flood, devastating flood, devastating pandemic, a flame that lasts for like one or two or three years, but by 15 years, millions of Romans died. He spends years of his reign fighting these endless wars. He would say life is warfare for a journey far from home. He was speaking literally. He just spends so much of his time away and not by choice. They say that no hair check and bury a child. Marcus Aurelius has to attend six funerals for his children. half of his children do not make it to adulthood.

8:44Life is a devastating series of hammer blows of pain and misfortune and awfulness. One thing after another. And so honestly, I would say that this work, meditations here, is actually a work of profound optimism and hope and perseverance. He kept knowing that this guy got out of bed every morning was a statement of optimism and hope. His life is dark, but he keeps going. He perseveres through all of it. I'm not saying the story, but he said, he admires Marcus all the more for this very reason, because it's these extraordinary circumstances. He survives and preserves the empire. So anyways, London on the 12th, Rotterdam the 13th, Dublin the 15th, Vancouver the 18th, Toronto the 20th.

9:33I'm really excited. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait to see you. We're doing like a backstage thing where I'm going to answer a bunch of your questions. Also, we have a few of those tickets left. And you can grab all that at ryanholiday.net slash tour. And I can't wait to see all of you there.

9:55When you feel lazy, this is the August 30th entry in the Daily Stoic. I don't know, maybe you heard of the book. Hopefully you heard of the book. It'd be weird if you're listening to the Daily Stoic podcast and you didn't know there was a Daily Stoic book, but you never know. Actually, you know, it's funny. I'm looking at this. I told you last week I had to run upstairs to grab the first edition of the hardcover. And I know this is a first edition because it doesn't say the Daily Stoic at the top of every page, which is something we realized in those early days of it coming out in 2016. People were posting pictures and not everyone knew what book it is.

10:33So in the subsequent versions, whatever version of it you have, you would see it says the Daily Stoic at the top of every page. But anyways, let's get to today's entry. We've got another quote from Seneca's Letters. This is letter 31. Anything that must yet be done, virtue can do with courage and promptness. For anyone would call it a sign of foolishness for one to undertake a task with a lazy and begrudging spirit, or to push the body in one direction and the mind in another to be torn apart by wildly divergent impulses. If you start something and right away feel yourself getting lazy and irritated, ask yourself, why am I doing this?

11:09Is it really necessary? If it really is a necessity, ask yourself, what's behind my reluctance, my fear, my spite, my fatigue? Don't forge ahead hoping that someone will come along and relieve you of this task you don't want to do or that someone else will suddenly explain why you're doing that matters. Don't be the kind of person who says yes with their mouth, but no with their actions. Steve Jobs told Businessweek in 2005, only midway through Apple's stunning rise to becoming one of the world's most valuable companies, quality is much better than quantity. One home run is better than two doubles.

11:46You know, this idea of how you do anything is how you do everything, right? One way we take that, and there's a chapter about this in The Obstacles Away, but one way to take that is like, Do everything as though it is incredibly important, right? And that's true. If you're doing it, do it as if it's important. But the question is, if it's not important, why are you doing it? Mark Shereles' question was to ask yourself, you know, is this thing essential, right? Because he says most of what we do and say is not essential. And his point was not to do these inessential things as if they are essential.

12:24He says you got to eliminate those inessential things so you can get the double benefit of doing the essential things better. When I find myself marking an email as unread, saying, oh, I'll get to this later, when I find myself doing that procrastination, seeing that resistance, yes, sometimes it's because it's going to be really hard and I got to do it as if it matters. I got to do it that spirit of courage and discipline that Seneca is talking about. But other times, this is a clue. This is my subconscious letting me know deep down, we know we don't need to be doing this. We shouldn't be doing this.

12:59This thing is something we got bullied into, something we didn't have the discipline to say no to, right? Something that is fundamentally inessential. And so I don't want you to think that stoicism is just gritting your teeth and bearing everything, doing everything a thousand percent, right? it's doing the right things the right way, the right amount of effort. That quote from Epictetus, he says, you could summarize Stoicism in two words, persist and resist. So some things you're persisting, you're pushing through, you're doing them with that spirit that Seneca's talking about. But other things you go, hey, that's not for me.

13:38I don't need to do that. That's not important to me. That's not a good use of my time and energy. Steve Jobs is saying, hey, pick your shots, right? Pick your shots. And the ability to do that requires wisdom. So all these virtues kind of interconnect. Courage, we're talking about. We're talking about discipline here. Talking about justice, right? Caring about what you do and being committed to it, giving it the respect it deserves, but also the wisdom to know what deserves respect and what doesn't. That's a critical balance that you've got to get right. I'll leave you that to chew on today and I'll talk to y 'all soon.

15:00We'll see you next time.

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