Your Job is This Simple | Accepting What Is

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0:45Ryan Holiday: My favorite thing about shopping about Wayfair is the reviews. You know, you buy stuff online sometimes and then you get it and it's way smaller than it looked or it's garbage. You know, you want to see real photos from real people so you know what you're actually buying. When refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:24It might not seem like much, but it may well be the hardest thing to do in the world. When tensions are high, when political dysfunction spills out into the streets, when anger and frustration abound, when misinformation and extremism and utter nonsense pervades, when cruelty and meanness become acceptable, when the system is falling apart and the center looks like it may not hold. Your job is simple. Don't become a lunatic. Don't let it infect you. Don't let it make you lose your mind. Marcus Aurelius had to do this in the terror of the plague. He had to do this during a coup attempt. Think of Cicero during those civil wars.

1:59Think of Chrysippus telling himself that the whole point of being a philosopher was not to join in with the mob and the rabble. They were holding out. It's not that they were disengaged. They were very engaged. It's that they strove not to be consumed by the passions that had wrecked their society. Lincoln had to strike a very similar balance. He knew that slavery was wrong. He knew that a good chunk of people were hell-bent on destroying the country. He also knew that he could not afford anything other than calmness, foresight, and clarity. He could not lose his humanity. He could not lose his mind.

2:30And neither can you. As we said recently, we can't let bad times turn us into bad people. The winds may howl, but we must not be swept away. We must remain good. We must remain sane. This is our main job. And look, your other main job is to vote. Go vote. Don't be a lunatic. Don't be infected. Make a smart, educated, stoic decision. You might be saying, who are you talking about? You know who I'm talking about. Make the right decision. Do the right thing. Think of Marcus Aurelius' celebration to Antoninus, what he learned from him, what he felt Antoninus embodied. And then tell yourself, who's the opposite of that in almost every way?

3:15That's today's message. I'll leave it there.

3:26Ryan Holiday: Today's entry, Accepting What Is. Reinhold Niebuhr's serenity prayer is a mantra for many. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. it reads, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. The Stoics wanted to push past simply accepting what is. They wanted us to be grateful and happy with what is. Epictetus taught that we get a well-flowing life when we wish for what is going to happen, not for what we want to happen. And Marcus Aurelius adds that we should meet anything that comes our way with gratitude. Not, I wish this was different and I'll tolerate it, but I'm glad it happened this way.

4:12Ryan Holiday: It's for the best. So let us try that on for size this week. And we have two quotes from Epictetus and one from Marcus Aurelius. Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will, and then your life will flow well. That's Epictetus' Inchiridion 8. And then from the Discourses 112, he says, to be truly educated means this, learning to wish that each thing happens exactly as it does. Marcus Aurelius' Meditation 9.6, all you need are these, certainty of judgment in the present moment, action for the common good in the present moment, and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.

5:01Ryan Holiday: One thing I wanted to point out, because I was fascinated to learn this, is the serenity prayer. One, it sounds like some sort of real hymn or prayer that must go back thousands of years. Honestly, it sounds like something that could come from the Stoics. And then, obviously, a lot of people associate it with the recovery movement, which it has become a big part of. But it really dates to the 30s and 40s. They think that he composed the prayer somewhere around the time of 1932, 1933, which for some context is, you know, in the midst of the Great Depression. But again, one of the benefits of wisdom is that it is both timely and timeless at the same time.

5:44Ryan Holiday: So this idea of the prayer, Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know one from another. Also, I think the difference between that as he first writes it and then what it sort of commonly gets rendered out is also a sign of, as Twain says, the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. like just the perfect wording of it, the perfect encapsulation of the wisdom. It feels as soon as you see it, even though, you know, it's as old as some people's grandparents who are listening to this, or perhaps some people who are listening to this themselves, they may be well older than that short little prayer, but it feels as current and fresh and also as ageless and timeless.

6:32Ryan Holiday: it's just about anything. But anyways, let's not nerd out too much on the history of the prayer. What I thought I would focus on today, because we've been talking about acceptance quite a lot here on the podcast, I tend to disagree a little bit with Epictetus. I find that Epictetus' life was so tragic and painful. His name literally means like enslaved. We know almost nothing about his family. We know nothing about his existence, except that he's born a slave. He has a cruel master who tortures him. He walks for a limp the rest of his life. And then after 30 years of slavery and eventually getting his freedom, Epictetus is exiled by a cruel emperor.

7:13Ryan Holiday: So it is a hard life. But I find it striking that nowhere in Epictetus's writings does he really question whether any of it was right or fair, whether anything could be done about it. Now, You might say this is him reaching this sort of sage-like level of wisdom. And I think there's truth to that. I mean, who am I to question, obviously, such a great and brave and enduring spirit. But I guess, obviously, we live in a world now where people have more agency. And why do we have that agency? Because people were willing to fight for it and change. So, obviously, the Stoics are mostly right, that so much of what happens in this world is outside of our control.

7:54Ryan Holiday: We should accept it. Resenting it, crying over it, whining about it, simply wishing it was otherwise does not do anything. Look, you were born five foot three instead of six foot three. That's just a reality. You're going to have to accept it, right? People in your family go bald. You're going to have to accept it, right? Your spouse turned out to be a jerk. They ran away with all your money, left you, broke your heart. It happened, right? That is true. But I just don't want Epictetus to be misinterpreted as some sort of rationalization or acceptance of profound injustices, including the injustices that Epictetus seemed relatively okay accepting, right?

8:36Ryan Holiday: As they say, progress depends on the unreasonable man. I talk about this a little bit in the Courage book. We have to be accepting. We have to face unflinchingly the reality of our situation. but even as I read this paragraph that I have written, I would push back on it a little bit and I do think it's important that we focus on what we're going to do about the situations that we find ourselves in. I feel like Epictetus could have done that a bit more himself. Still obviously a great man, better man than I. Certainly I could not have endured what he endured but it's just a thought today and I want you to be okay pushing back and questioning things from the Stoics as well.

9:12Ryan Holiday: They weren't perfect. They were products of their time. They were products of their own experiences. And we can challenge and debate and argue with them as long as we think we're getting them closer to what they actually mean, what the wisdom of the Stoics actually mean. And that's today's message.

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