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On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like to hear or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. I'll give you 100 more pieces of life-changing advice from someone I've been studying and thinking about for the last 20 years.
People don't seem to understand this one really important thing. It's that you have a superpower. You have the power, Marcus Aurelius says, to have no opinion. He says, remember, events, things are not asking to be judged by you.
You don't have to have an opinion about this, he says. You can just see it as it is. You can think nothing of it. You don't have to label it.
You don't have to put it in categories. You don't have to say it's fair or unfair, positive or negative, smart or dumb. Just accept it as it is. Don't still try to see the world as objective.
Try not to insert opinions or judgments on top of things, because this is the path to peace. It's the path of wisdom. And of course, being agnostic in this way allows you to get to work doing what you need to do, rather than wasting your time labeling, judging, and having opinions about stuff that is not up to you. It would be a mistake to see Marcus Aurelius as perfect.
He wasn't perfect because no one is perfect. He's a human being. Marcus, instead, was trying to get better, always. And that's what meditations was.
Meditations was Marcus Aurelius writing notes to himself. So when Marcus Aurelius warns against having a temper or being afraid of death or being ambitious or any of the things he talks about is needing to work on, he's not lecturing you. He's lecturing him. Probably because he just lost his temper.
Probably because he struggled with that. So you don't want to see Marcus as perfect. He's saying how unfamiliar these names, which were so important not very long ago, already are. It's like what Taylor Swift was talking about when she says that who's who of who's that.
Marcus Aurelius is saying that's what we'll become. It doesn't matter how important we are, how powerful we are, how much money we make. We all slip into oblivion very, very quickly. His words, once common, now sound archaic.
And the names of the famous dead as well. Everything fades quickly, he says, and is forgotten. What is eternal fame? He says it's emptiness.
It's worthless. So what we prize instead, being a good person now, doing good now, being virtuous now. Some people say that Marcus Aurelius' meditations is depressing. But you know what?
Marcus Aurelius' life is depressing. This is a guy who lives through a historic flood, a plague, endless wars, there's a coup. They say no parents should have to bury a child. Marcus Aurelius buries half of his children.
He has to attend six funerals for his children. He lost his father at an early age. Later, he loses his wife. It's one thing after another for this guy.
One heartbreak after another. So Marcus Aurelius' meditations isn't depressing. The fact that he got out of bed every morning was a profound statement of hope and perseverance and resilience and optimism. That he cared about anything.
That he strove to be better. That he strove to be a good person. That he didn't let it wear him down, turn him into annihilated. That it didn't deprive him of meaning and purpose.
This is the hopefulness. This is the optimism. This is the cheerfulness. This is the optimism.
That despite the blows of faith, unfairness of life, we keep going. We keep striving to be good. We keep striving to be and do our best. So the famous passage from Marcus Aurelius where he's talking about how the obstacle is the way.
Do you know what kind of obstacles he's talking about? He's not talking about natural disasters. He's not talking about losing your arm. He's not talking about any of that.
He's talking about people. He's talking about assholes. He's talking about jerks. He's saying that people are a proper occupation.
So they actually can't impede us. They can't get in our way. They can't actually cause us trouble. Because all the things they do are opportunities for us.
Opportunities for us to practice virtue, courage, and discipline, and justice, and wisdom. We can have intentions. And people can cause problems and disruptions. They can get in the way of what we're trying to do.
But they present us new opportunities to try new things. Let's try to see these frustrating, annoying, obnoxious people in our lives not as problems or frustrations or even obnoxious at all, but actually as opportunities. Opportunities for us to be kind. Opportunities for us to be patient.
Opportunities for us to be creative. Opportunities for us to teach. And opportunities for us to learn. That's what Marcus Aurelius means when he says the obstacle is the way.
The key to a good life, Marcus Aurelius said, was a strong mind. Fortune was unpredictable. But mental toughness was something you could depend on. He said, we want to be like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually the sea falls still around.
That's what cultivating a mental resilience, emotional fortitude, is all about. And if you can do that, then nothing can throw you off and you are unbreakable. I remember once I was having a conversation with a great Robert Green. He showed me his copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
And he would write in the margins, look, AF. AF stood for Amor Fati. Amor Fati actually comes to us from Nietzsche, who was not a particularly big fan of the Stoics, but expressed something, I think, at the core of Stoicism. He said, not just to bear what is necessary or accept it.
It says, you must love it. Amor Fati, a love of one's faith. It was Robert who made this explicit connection between Stoicism and Amor Fati, which I popularized in Stoic and our videos and my books. I have a chapter about it in the opposite way.
Robert and I even made this coin, which I carry with me everywhere. It says, Amor Fati has that picture of a fire. Marcus Aurelius, again, remembers saying that what you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire. The fire loves what you're throwing in there.
So I just love that idea. I'm so embedded to Robert to help me see this connection between two wildly different philosophical schools of thought, but finally there's one area where they converge. We can imagine that that's what Marcus Aurelius is doing in Meditations, right? Like, what's weird about Meditations is that it's not a book for the reader.
It's a book for the writer. Right. Like, he was writing it. He was getting his thoughts out on paper.
Yeah, and we know for a fact that he wrote significant chunks of it while leading the Roman army. So he's, you know, maybe it's the morning before battle, maybe it's the evening afterwards, and he's just sort of sitting in this tent writing things down. I think journaling is a big part. Like, if you can take, you've got these thoughts that are just kind of pinging around in your head.
The act of writing them down creates even just a few feet of distance, which is really powerful. I think journaling would be a way the Stoics would do that. There's this image that I can't get out of my head, and it's Marcus Aurelius in the depths of the Antonine's place. This devastating global pandemic that wrecks and ravages Rome in every way you can imagine.
And the image I have is of Marcus Aurelius holding a two-week sale on the lawn of the imperial palace. He sells jewels and statues and robes and couches and furniture, all the binary that goes along with being an emperor he puts up for sale. And he does this because he's trying to send a message. He's trying to say, I don't need this stuff.
I'm going to put others before me. I'm not going to live in luxury while other people are suffering. It's the image of the CEO taking a pay cut in a bad economy. It's an athlete who renegotiates their contracts so the team can add on extra players.
It's a leader who eats less. That's the idea. It's a coworker who covers your chef. It's about putting others before yourself.
And that's what greatness is. That's what this idea of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom is supposed to allow us to do. To do the right thing even when it's hard, even when it goes against our own immediate self-interest. It's what allows us to show up for others, to sacrifice for the sake of others.
It's what allows us to share what we have. And it's what allows us to be there when it really matters. Nobody likes getting up early. Not even more experience.
In meditation he talks about trying to get up early. He has this fantastic conversation with himself. He goes, but it's warmer under the covers. He says, is that what you were put here to do?
To huddle under the blankets and be warm? He says, we're all put here for a purpose. We have a nature. We have a duty.
And we have to go. And we have to do that. And the morning is the best time to do stuff, to get stuff done. So that's why the Stokes tried to get up early.
I say, try because they didn't always do it. And it wasn't always easy. And they didn't always like it. They tried to do it anyway.
I might have repeated myself in a few of these. And again, Marcus repeats himself a lot through meditations. Because he's not writing a prescription about all of the philosophy. He's not trying to tackle every situation or problem or asset of Stokesism.
He's trying to talk about what he needs, which seems to be reminders of his mortality, which seems to be why he shouldn't lose his temper, which seems to be about controlling his ambition, which seems about taking the long view, seeing things big picture. Meditations is not complete or comprehensive. It's the opposite. It's kindness as a virtue in Stokesism, like with his compassion.
In a way, you know. At the beginning of Meditations, Marcus Reyes talks about one of his teachers taught him to be free of passion, but full of love. And I think that's lovely. The short lines in meditations are the best.
Discard your misperceptions. Stop being jerked around like a puppet. Limit yourself to the present. There's just a couple of words.
They say so much. And they cut through so much space and time. He never uses two words where one will do. He doesn't beat around the bush.
He just comes out and says it. And the advice is so clear. It's so obvious. And yet as simple as it is, it's so incredibly difficult.
You think you're a good person, but you're hurting people. Marcus Reyes reminds himself in Meditations, he says, remember, you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also. There's the things that we turn away from, the things we don't want to think about, the things that we say are someone else's problems, the things we say we can't do anything about. And those are injustices that we are allowing to be perpetrated.
We're complicit in that, unless we try to do something about them. Marcus Reyes talks about being jarred by circumstances, messing up, failing. He talks about the idea of a rhythm, coming back to the rhythm. And I like this idea.
I think Stokes talks about logos are the way. You think of the logos, the kind of rhythm of the universe being the way. Something you come back to. So even if you screw up, it's always there.
The metronome is always there. The rhythm of the music is always there. You want to come back to it. The obstacle is not the problem.
You're the problem. Your opinions about it are the problem. Your orientation towards it is the problem. The Stokes say the obstacle is the way.
The impediment to action advances, actually stands in the way, becomes the way. What do they mean by that? Marcus Reyes is saying that there's something you get to do because of this. There's things that you can do now that you couldn't do before.
There's an opportunity for you to act with courage or discipline or justice or wisdom. There's something you can do now that you couldn't ordinarily do. We can't let a crisis go to waste. We have to use this thing in front of us.
The most powerful man in the world in an empire 2,000 years ago who believed preposterous things about where the universe came from, even their sense of right and wrong, and the Romans were like us and then were utterly not like us. And no one was more removed from normal, modern life than the emperor. You crack open this book, Meditations, to himself, and it's not just, oh, I get a sense of what he's talking about, but it sounds like he's speaking to you with what you are dealing with right now. What it is, ultimately, is the specificity, the total insularness of it makes it utterly generalizable and relatable.
He was authentically being himself and in that way manages to speak to millions for all time. In one passage in Meditations, Marcus Reilers writes down what he calls epithets for the self. He talks about being honest. He talks about being upright.
These are words he says that he can live by. A couple different times in my life I've tried to do that, but part of one of the David Stoke challenges a few years ago, I wrote down seven of them. I wrote honest, calm, fair, father, brave, generous, and still. These are words that I try to live by.
I'm going to make decisions, take actions that will demonstrate that ideal, which will show that those are the watchwords or the epithets that I live by, that I could be described by. Concentrate like a Roman, Marcus Reilers says. Concentrate on doing the thing in front of you as if it was the last thing you were doing in your life. I think about that pretty often.
The idea of, it's not that you're going to die tomorrow for sure, but that it could be the last time you send this email. It could be the last time you have this conversation. It could be the last time that I sit down to write or that I sit down to make a video. So am I going to be fully present?
Am I going to concentrate? Am I going to do my job? Am I going to meet the standards of my people, of my profession, of my family, whatever it is? Am I going to concentrate like a Roman?
Am I going to do it like this thing matters? And I might not get another opportunity to do it. To me, that's the test. That's the standard to try to meet every day that you are lucky enough to be alive.
In book 537, Mark's really says, I was a fortunate man, but at some point, fortune abandoned me. We can imagine Mark is saying this after the plague, after he's burying another child, maybe after he hears again that perhaps his wife is cheating on him, maybe his health has failed him again, and he catches himself. Again, this is what he's doing in meditation. He's constantly catching himself.
He says, but true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune, he says, is good character, good intentions, and good actions. I love that idea so much. It wasn't what was happening to him in the outside.
Fortune wasn't this external thing. Good fortune, feeling good, being good. This was something that was up to him, that was inside him, and the choices that he made and the actions that he took. Being an effective leader is difficult, right?
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Whatnot.com slash sell. The Meditations of the Marketplace on Realism is the first thing to read, right? It's probably the easiest, most successful work of philosophy ever written, and the most universal. Because it was his diary.
It was not intended to be read by anybody, as far as we know. And it's the most empowering thing I ever read, especially for when I was young. It was incredibly important. There were other things, too.
You know, the Meditations of Christ, which is incredibly important, but it's kind of like Christian Stoicism. I mean, you realize that the root of a lot of these thinking that we have is most empowering to us. How could we conceive that it is depressing? On the contrary, this is basically, bring it on.
This is life. That's the wrong way of thinking about it. You're being crazy, letting them determine whether you did a good job or not, whether you're happy or not, whether you're a success or not. says ambition is tying your happiness to what other people do and say and think sanity he says is tying it to your own actions like when i work on my books the writing of the book is up to me how it does on the bestseller list what people think about it what the review saying that isn't up to me so my definition of success is an internal one i focus on the parts of it i control do i want other people to like it and care about it sure i guess it's nice to have but it's extra it's not why i do it because to need it is to be insane and of course incredibly vulnerable another one that i didn't get at first marx really saying to avoid imperialization he says that indelible stain and i didn't really know what he meant by imperialization and that's when i saw in another translation i realized what he's talking about is imperialization like the imperial system of he means to not be caesarified to not be corrupted by his position so i think sometimes it's just where you are you don't know what a certain word means or just the intonation you're reading about it it doesn't hit you in the right way and this is why you have to come back to things why you can't just be satisfied with getting the gist of something you have to return to it over and over again because you get it in a new way it also is why as much as i've loved the hayes translation why we have this edition it's why i've read the other translations it's why i like the robin waterfield annotated version because he's bringing his perspective he's breaking down what he sees and each time you do that you get something new in gregory hayes's introduction of meditations he says there's an american president who re-reads marcus aurelius every single year some research turned up he was talking then about president bill clinton obviously bill clinton did not get truly the message of meditation but i think the point is how much better off would we be if every leader if every person in a position of power was familiar with marcus aurelius in his writings because he was there he had that job he had that job times a thousand and he knew what you had to strive to do he knew what you had to try your hardest not to do he knew what you had to be to be great and i think it's important that it's not just reading it once again it's the idea of re-reading it every year i know that i've taken something new out of it each time i pick up this book as i have now for almost 15 years and that's why bill clinton was re-reading it every year and that's why every leader every parent every person should do the same there's a passage in marxerose's medications where he goes that's passing it because how many people know who that is and that's passing was the emperor like five emperors before marcus so he's the most powerful important person in the world ruled as an emperor god in the biggest empire of the most famous empire history and nobody knows who he is his point was not okay so you have to really conquer a lot of territory to be more famous than this passage he was saying this is a race you can't win you're harming yourself marxerose says it can only harm you if it harms your character what he means is the thing happens to you they stole from you they lied to you they did something to you but then it's in how you respond if that makes you worse that makes you do something unethical it makes you something other than what you should be that's where the harm comes from the harm comes in your reaction how you're responding to the thing what they did to you is nothing if it doesn't touch inside you it doesn't change who you are what you do how you treat people marcus aurelius had a lot to complain about a lot goes wrong he doesn't meet with the good fortune that he deserved he's betrayed he's misled people lie to him people try to take things from him he has a job that he doesn't even want and yet nowhere in meditations what he thinks is his private diary that no one is going to read we never once see him complain about any of this he doesn't complain about being unappreciated doesn't complain about being abused he doesn't complain about being put upon he doesn't complain about the stress doesn't do any of it because as he says in meditations we should never be overheard complaining not even to ourselves i lost this wife of 60 years and i'm so sorry it's sort of devastating but there was a marcus aurelius quote that really lifted me which was i don't know literally but you'll know if you lose a loved one honor her and in a sense try to be more like her and then she'll live in your actions and so my wife was very good and i i just try to be like her and when i try to be like her i you know like she was very if someone was alone or sick or something she'd call them up and be comforting to them and i'm not like that so i started to do that people that i know some guys my age who have no grandchildren are just there and call them up and say how are you and being like her and they were so pleased and so kind yeah so i keep my wife in my life with marcus aurelius advice by trying to be more like her i find that absolutely beautiful since you're a lover of marcus aurelius i'll give you this quote my favorite translation is the hayes translation which he did for the modern library this is what marcus aurelius says he learned from his brother severus he says to love my family truth and justice it was through him that i encountered thracia helvetius cato dion and brutus and conceived of a society of equal laws governed by a quality of status and of speech and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else yeah you don't think that our founders aren't imbibing marcus aurelius it's all there the catechism is just being rewritten it had already been written i remember i was talking to the great robert green and i asked him what one of his favorite passages from marcus aurelius's meditations was he said it was the one where marcus aurelius is talking about he's looking at this big feast away the preconceived notions to strip them of the mythology that they have that's what marcus says he says it's about stripping things of the legend that encrust them about seeing them as they actually are i think that's not only what a philosopher has to do but i think that's what a great writer like robert green does in book 12 of meditations marcus says it never ceases to amaze me we love ourselves more than other people yet we care about their opinions more than our own i thought about this when i first book of stowa philosophy came out i worked really hard on it i knew what it deserved and there it was not on the best side of it got skunked for some inexplicable reason and i had to remind myself my judgment of the book is what counts not whether i hit this arbitrary list i can't think about that but so often that's what we do we like a shirt or we like a show we like this and other people say well that's not cool or that's strange or that's incorrect for the following reasons and we give up our own internal sense of what we like or dislike what's right or wrong to do what everyone else is doing and marcus would say that this is crazy in fact he says that sanity is tying your success to what you say and do insanity is tying it to what other people say can do this is one of the most powerful lessons of marcus that even the emperor of roma struggling with it i think shows how difficult it is to maintain that inner scorecard when everyone around you is thinking we're saying something differently than you i was lucky enough actually to interview gregory hayes the translator of these two books way back in 2007 i just had this little blog i sent him a note and i asked him what his favorite passage in meditations was keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone those that are now and those to come existence flows past us like a river the what is in constant flux the why has a thousand variations nothing is stable not even what's right here the infinity of the past and future gapes before us a chasm whose depths we cannot see and actually when we illustrated this edition of meditations i try to capture that the time flows like a river and you just think of it rushing past you think that marcus is writing it near the danu in a quincum water is clearly this repeated metaphor and analogy in the stoics and most of all i think it can both humble and inspire us part of the reason your life sucks is because your thoughts suck marcus really says that our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts so if we see only negative if we only see the worst in people if we only see what's impossible if we only see how we've screwed up that's going to color our perception of reality your life is dyed by the color of your thoughts several points in meditations marx really summarizes what are in effect the three disciplines of stoicism that you need to know always perception how we see things action what we do about those things what part of those things are outside our control the discipline of perception is what part of this is in my control what isn't what is it actually how i see is possible then the next step is what are you going to do about what action can you take and the third part is the will the fortitude the strength the perseverance that you bring to bear on that problem obstacle situation perception action will that's the essence of stoic philosophy which marcus organizes meditations around and returns to repeatedly over and over again marcus says not only can you not expect plato's republic but he says you have to deal with the place that you're in you got to make practical decisions based on what you're in he says the cucumber is bitter at one point in meditations throw it out he says if there's brambles in the path go around don't despair don't be mad don't wish it was otherwise just get to work start where you are with what you have and build from there there's no way that marcus aureus does not have an anger problem he talks about temper and losing your cool and emotions too much for his private journal if that's not something he's actively struggling with my reading over and over again is the reason he doesn't say like jokes are funny you know or sex feels good because he doesn't need a reminder of that like he's got that covered the book is him really trying to remind himself of what he keeps forgetting right marcus aureus is clearly very strict with himself meditation is one sort of rule admonishment high almost impossible standard that he's setting for himself after another and yet we're told by historians the brilliance of marcus is that his strictness was limited solely to himself and this was a deliberate thing by marcus aureus he says tolerant with others strict with yourself he's conscious of the fact that it's called self-discipline for a reason you control yourself you control the standards you set for yourself but you have to be tolerant and understanding of other people in another part in meditations he chastises himself for not being a better forgiver of faults and that's what we have to cultivate this practice should make us better but also we're forgiving and tolerant of other people you just gotta mind your own business marcus aureus reminds us we should stop trying to escape other people's faults we should try to escape our own one of my favorite little tidbits about marcus is there's lines in there and they're like this is this sounds like a quote and they track it down it's like oh this is a lost line from a play from euripides or something it's like this is the only existing fragment from that thing and he's almost certainly quoting it from memory just to himself or there's little lines from the great poets like this is a person steeped in all the great forms of art in addition to being a politician and a parent nobody's journal is that good it's pretty incredible yeah and i like seneca because like when you read his letters you're like wait a minute you said this other thing in another letter you know he's very human he'll be like you know you shouldn't just quote people you know you should have some of your own ideas and he's like by the way here's this quote from here's my daily quote from here's my daily quote from here's my daily quote from you know this is like really human how did marcus aureus die of the play marcus was writing in what we now call the antonine play like they named it after him but it's like a global pandemic it starts in the east overwhelms rome five ten million people die they have no way of stopping it so marcus leads through all of that the suspicion is that he catches it at the end realizes he has it has to send his son away so he doesn't give it to his son sets in motion like a series of advisors who should lead his son and then his son promptly gets rid of all of them and goes bad your anger is impotent marcus realized in meditations he quotes a line from a lost play by the playwright euripides and the line says why should you feel anger at the world as if the world would notice nobody cares it doesn't matter it doesn't mean anything your anger your resentment your grievance you are shouting into an enormous void you are yelling at an inanimate object you are mad at forces that are so enormous that are utterly amoral completely indifferent to you and your existence so you might as well let go what good is posthumous fame is so exciting it won't do you any good you'll be dead and more importantly marcus reminds us that the people in the future aren't going to magically be better or smarter they're going to be just as stupid and annoying and misinformed as they are now so stop chasing posthumous fame exist in the present do what you can now do what's right now the fruit of this life marcus says at one point in meditations is good character and acts for the common good elsewhere he talks about this epithets for the self those are two pretty good ones so you should be a good character always and do good things for other people always that was his motto good character good deeds it's hard to come up with a better summation for a good life than that you care about yourself more than other people you're self-interested as all people are by definition and yet marcus points out we care about other people's opinions more than our own we care if they like what we wear if they like what we say if they think we're good or or bad or whatever it's insane trust your opinion develop your own internal compass your own internal sense of whether you're doing a good job or a bad job whether you were successful or not you can't outsource it to the crowd remember the crowd is the mob the mob is irrational so you can't let them determine any of it philosophy can feel like this impractical inaccessible thing but marcus really writes in meditations says no role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you're in right now he says it stares you in the face and of course he's talking to himself of course he's talking about being emperor but if it stares the emperor in the face that no role is so well suited to being philosophical is that i think it's also true for being a janitor for being a stay-at-home parent to being a salesperson being an astronaut whatever it is that you do whatever role life has you in in this moment stares you in the face nothing is so well suited to what you're doing as this philosophy at his most vulnerable moment marcus aurelius was betrayed he was sick he was struggling people didn't know if he would survive or not one of his trusted generals davidius cassius declares himself emperor this not only is a betrayal of their relationship it puts marcus aurelius and his family in grave danger so marcus had every reason to seek revenge and he does it in fact he uses it as his opportunity he says to teach future roman generations how to deal with civil strife when marcus really talks in meditations about revenge he's not just talking about this theoretically or abstract he knew it intimately we know what it means when someone we trust takes from us or hurts us but marcus says you can't let this break or change it says the best revenge is to not be like that so we don't control what other people do but we control who we are in a world where those things can happen and that's marcus aurelius's advice on not getting revenge the greatness of marcus realized he was always trying to get the bigger perspective he's trying to get to the outside of things yeah sure he was the emperor of rome he was the head of this enormous empire but he tried to zoom out he tried to look at it from the 10 000 foot view and he said look how puny this all looks tried to zoom out and get perspective so he could see what that actually was he could strip it of the legend that encrusted it and so must we when we see these things up close we see how small they are from afar right that we strip them of their politics we strip them of the loaded context they're in and hopefully we can have a greater cosmic sense of what the stoics call the common good our relation to each other the puniness of the things that we're willing to do so many terrible things for and hopefully this can make us better and more connected to our fellow human beings you can imagine that as the emperor of rome people had a lot of strong opinions about marcus they thought he was the best in the world they thought he he thought he was amazing he would have been bombarded with opinions from other people about him he has to push this aside he has to not think about it he has to set his own standards he has to keep his own inner scorecard he says at one point in meditation that the perks of his job is that you can earn a bad reputation by doing good deeds think of someone like harry truman who makes a bunch of momentous critical probably correct decisions but he leaves office one of the least popular presidents in american history that's what marcus is talking about people have strong opinions about what you do but you have to set your own standards your own scorecard to do the right thing because it's the right thing not because it's going to make you popular or conversely not concerned whether it might make you unpopular one of the most important habits you can practice is patience one of the things i learned with this bookstore is the truth of what they call hostetter's law it always takes longer than you expect even when you take hostetter's law into account we want our progress now we want our success now we want our rewards now but if you can practice delayed gratification you understand it takes a while but it's part of a process you're almost always going to be more successful right you think of marcus realis he's told he's going to be emperor but antoninus is going to rule first and they think it's going to be one or two or three or four or five years it's like 20 years he has to wait 20 years before he can become the emperor so if marcus doesn't have patience if life doesn't force him to practice the virtue of patience he'd have gone crazy he'd lost his mind and he wouldn't have actually been as good as he was as temper all things require patience whether you're writing books whether you're being a leader whether you have kids learning how to practice patience is critical and what i think when i'm stuck in traffic when the flight is delayed when my book's going slower than i thought i go this isn't frustrating this isn't annoying although it is those things i say this is an opportunity to get reps with patience this is the opportunity to practice patience and i will be better for having gone through this i was talking earlier about how marcus really said that like we're soldiers throwing the wall you have to be able to ask for help i think this is really important especially again when we're lonely when we're struggling we feel like we can't do something we have to be able to ask for help a book i like to read my kids called the boy the fox the horse and the mole and he says something like asking for help isn't giving up it's refusing to give up it takes a lot of courage to ask for help and help doesn't mean hey i need you to do all this stuff for me it could be like hey i'm going to do this thing you want to come with me asking for help reaching out putting yourself out there courage isn't just like what you do in a military campaign courage isn't just betting your life on something idea courage is also saying i don't know how to do something saying i need help to do something it's a mistake if we conflate stoicism with solitariness with independence the lack of connection with an inability to ask for help in fact the stoics would tell you to be brave enough to do that very thing it's not unfortunate that this Like a lot of people, I have a tendency to overwork, to overdo, to overcommit, to take things too intensely.
Mark Surrealist warns himself against this in meditations and stuck with me always. He says, in your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander.
In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business. Don't be all about business. Your problem is that you want the third thing.
Mark Surrealist says, okay, you did something good for someone. They received that benefit. That's awesome. Transaction concluded.
You don't need the third thing, recognition, gratitude, appreciation. You don't need the world to throw you a parade. You don't need acknowledgement. And you didn't even do anything special.
You did your job, which is to do good, to be good, to help people, to be kind. You did the right thing. That's enough. The people you meet are going to stop.
This is the harsh truth that Mark Surrealist opens meditations with. He says they're going to be jealous and annoying and difficult. We know they're going to be these things. We have to go into the day with our eyes wide open.
That's the harsh truth part of it. But the uplifting part, the happy part of it is the second part. He says, but they can't implicate you in ugliness. Remember that you're made to work together, that life is incomplete without those kinds of people.
We can't be surprised by it. We can't let it suck us down. And we can't let it change us for the negative. We still have to be good.
We still have to do our job. We still have to play our part. Whenever you feel like criticizing someone, remember that they haven't had the advantages that you've had. That's the idea at the beginning of The Great Gatsby.
But it's also a really important stoic idea. Mark Surrealist says, tolerant with others, strict with yourself. It's common today to talk about privilege. Well, we're all privileged in some ways.
We all have a certain amount of advantages. We've been lucky in certain ways. And if we presume that other people haven't been as lucky as we have, then we can be more tolerant and accepting and kind and understanding of them and what they're going for. And that is a key stoic idea.
You get the sense that Mark Surrealist was a homebody. And he says in medications, you don't need to go on vacation. You don't need to go anywhere. You don't need to go do anything.
You can get peace by retreating inside yourself. That's something I remind myself when I feel. Not just myself longing for stuff, but even when I go do stuff. Look, you don't need to go do something awesome.
You don't need to go somewhere exotic. You don't need to go do something cool. You don't even need to go see other people to get excitement, to get fulfillment or nourishment. You can have that inside.
You can have that by having a conversation with yourself. You can have that by reflection. You can have that by study. You don't have to go out and do it.
You can call someone on the phone. I'm not saying this to say don't be social. What I'm saying is we tell ourselves that it's going and doing things that will find fulfillment and meaning in it. But that's not true.
We carry ourselves with us wherever we're going. And so if we want it, we can get it from ourselves. One of my favorite passages in meditation, Mark Surrealist talks about washing off the dust of earthly life. I think studying philosophy is a way to do that.
Going for a walk is a way to do that. The Romans would have done that in the bathhouse. We can imagine Marcus after a day of writing, a day of hearing cases or meetings. He would have been dirty, literally and figuratively.
And he would have walked to a bathhouse at gymnasium and he would have cleaned himself there. He would have gotten a cold plunge or a thermal pool. In fact, at the quincum where Marcus writes a chunk of medications, you can step in one of those pools. It's still running today.
There's something beautiful and timeless about that. And I think very practical about the reminder of washing off the dust of earthly life, literally and metaphorically. This is a print I have from one of my favorite passages from Mark Surrealist. I have it on the wall.
Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. I think arguably Mark Surrealist's greatest contributions to philosophy are not what he wrote in this book, right? What Marcus's greatest contributions to philosophy is how he lived.
That even if he had never written a philosophical work, that he'd still be seen as a kind of philosopher king because he embodied the ideas. He lived them. He demonstrated that a king, an emperor, a person of power, influence, or wealth could be good and decent, could do the right thing, could be everything that people expected of him. And that's just, to me, the most important thing we can take from Mark Surrealist.
We think we solve our problems with some genius solution, some creative, out-of-the-box new idea. And maybe sometimes we do. But most of the time we solve problems, we get over obstacles, step by step by step. In meditation, Mark Surrealist says, you assemble your life action by action, step by step.
Benefit of doing it that way is that no one can stop you from doing that little individual piece, that small thing in front of you. And what the Stokes realizes is that the small thing is not so small. Actually, Zeno says just this. He says, well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing.
So yeah, you've got this big project. You've got to finish. You've got this huge deficit to get yourself out of. How do you do it?
Right? It's not by some magical solution. It's not by some silver bullet. It's by doing the next right thing and the next right thing and the next right thing.
It's by doing it step by step, action by action. No one can stop you from that except for yourself. The grudge you're holding, it's meaningless. Mark Surrealist says, look at the people who held these grudges, who raged about things, who held on to things.
He says, where are they now? They're dead and gone. The grudge went nowhere. And the same is going to happen to your thing.
Whatever it is you're upset about, however significant it was for you, eventually it disappears along with you. So how can you work on letting it go? How can you move on? How can you process?
How can you not carry it around? How can you not let it consume you? Bill Belichick, greatest football coach in history, tells his players, do your job. Mark Surrealist asks himself that same question in meditation.
He says, what is my vocation? It's just to be a good person. That's the job. At the end of the day, to be a good person, to do good things, to make a positive difference in the world for yourself and the people around you.
You're never going to escape change. Life is change. Mark Surrealist reminds us that being born was a change. Death is a change.
Every good thing in your life came from a change. So did bad things, of course. But everything in life has changed. You cannot escape it.
You can fully accept it. You can fully embrace it. You're being too idealistic. In meditation, Mark Surrealist writes himself.
He says, remember, you don't live in Plato's Republic. Just don't go around expecting utopia. Don't expect people to be perfect, because they're not. That was actually the knock in Rome against the great Stoke Cato.
Cicero said, look, this guy's problem is that he thinks he lives in Plato's Republic instead of the dregs of Romulus. He was too high-minded, too idealistic, and couldn't be pragmatic and practical enough to exist and work with other people to solve imperfect problems with imperfect solutions. But that's part of Stoicism, too. You just got to mind your own business.
Mark Surrealist reminds us we should stop trying to escape other people's faults. We should try to escape our own. There's a pretty amazing story about Mark Surrealist. Pretty late in life, he's seen leaving his palace in Rome.
He's carrying these tablets. And a friend says, where are you going? He says, I'm off to see Sexus the Philosopher to learn that which I do not yet know. A friend marvels.
He says, here's the most powerful man in the world, even as an old age, picking up his books and going to school. I think that's, in effect, what Marcus is. He remains a student. It's his notebook.
It's his exercise book. It's his workbook. He's doing work on himself, even as an old man. And the fruits of that come down to us.
It's just so wonderful to think of Marcus, even as an old man. Maybe some of the lines in here, he learned from Sexus the Philosopher. He thanks Sexus the Philosopher in book one, the Deaths and Lessons chapter. So the idea for Marcus was that you always stay a student.
You're not going to be remembered. You're not that important. Mark Surrealist says, run down the list. All the people that came before him.
He says, what happened to all these famous names? These names that used to sound so familiar. We all disappear. We all recede into memory.
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That's pipedrive.com slash stoic. You'll be up and running in minutes. P.R. Hiddell, one of the great scholars of Marcus Relius, talks about the oceanic feeling.
Marcus Relius talks about the view from above, talks about the immensity, how all the experience escapes before us. Marcus is trying to meditate on the vastness and the connectedness of everything in the world. He talks about looking at the stars and watching yourself alongside them. I think he's seeking out these kind of humbling experiences.
You can think about why that would be so important to someone who was literally the center of the universe, the person on which so much depended on. He wanted to remind himself that that wasn't strictly true. Greg Ray Hayes in his translation of meditations, he makes a great point. I missed it the first couple of times.
He says, but nowhere does Marcus identify as a stoic. He never says, I am a stoic. I adhere to stoicism. He says, of course, filled with all sorts of stoic observations and principles.
He said that Marcus would have identified as a philosopher. Paul Graham in one of his famous essays says, keep your identity small. Don't identify as a singular thing or with a singular ideology. You want to be a free agent.
This is why Seneca quotes so much from Epicurus. He read widely. He understood widely. The point is not to be a stoic philosopher.
The point is to be a philosopher and lover of wisdom. Most of what you do is totally essential. Marcus says, that's a question we have to ask ourselves. Is this essential?
Because so much of it is trivial. So much of it is unnecessary. So much of it is inefficient. He said, when you eliminate the inessential, what you get is the double benefit of doing the essential things better.
So you want to constantly be eliminated, constantly paring things down, constantly asking yourself, do I really need to be doing this? Is it important? Is it going to move the needle? Why am I doing it?
How could I do it better? You eliminate the inessential and you do the essential better. The key to a great life, Marcus really says, is to be free of passion, but full of love. People think of the stoic as emotionless.
That's totally missing what they were. They tried to be free of the destructive emotions. They tried to replace that with love. Love for other people.
Love for any and all situations in life. To love that and to use it as an opportunity to love and appreciate the people that you get to have to experience those things with. At one point in meditations, Marcus really says, avoid false friendship at all costs. He says, nothing is more painful.
Nothing is worse. And he knows this from experience. I tell an obstacle is the way. The story of Marcus being betrayed by Avidius Cassius, his most trusted general, one of his best friends.
He declares himself emperor. Essentially, he attempts to orchestrate a coup. Marcus Aurelius knew that although we wanted to be trusting people, although we wanted to assume the best in people, we had to understand that people were not perfect. People could be led astray.
People could have people, intentions in their heart. We have to be aware of this. We have to be prepared for it. One thing Marcus doesn't talk a lot about in meditations is happiness or joy.
But I think that goes back to the idea that he wasn't talking about things he didn't need help with. He's not having to remind himself that jokes are funny, that sex feels good. In fact, he's reminding himself the opposite, that sex might go good in the moment, but it can cause regrets or complications or problems later on. He's reminding himself of the things that he needs the most help with.
Nice fancy bed is better than a hard and comfortable one. He doesn't need a reminder of that. So meditations is Marcus Aurelius talking about the things that are important to him. But we should not take that omission as meaning anything more than that.
The Stoics were happy. The Stoics had joy. The Stoics loved. And we know Marcus did these things.
The Stoics had emotions. The Stoics sought out cool experiences. The Stoics were just like us. Marcus had some sense of what human flourishing or happiness was.
That's just not what he was talking the most about in meditations. In book 11 of meditations, Marcus Aurelius talked about something that must have been very common for him, which is that people didn't like him. People cursed him. They criticized him.
They questioned his integrity, his commitment, and all these things. So in book 11, 13, he says, someone despises me. That's their problem. Mine is not to do or say anything despicable.
If someone hates me, their problem. Mine is to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including that, ready to show them their mistake, not spitefully, or to show off my own self-control, but in an honest, upright way. That's what we should be like inside. He says, never let the gods catch us feeling anger or resentment.
If someone doesn't like you, that's their problem. And the important thing is you don't let it change you. You don't let it affect you. You don't let it make you like them.
You just lock on to what you have to do and try to be patient and kind. You try to think better and do better for other people that in fact they might ever even think of doing for you. One passage I marked down in meditations when I first read it. Marcus Aurelius goes straight to the seat of intelligence.
Writing and reading require a master. So too does life. Mentors have been a huge guiding force in my life. If you don't have a mentor, if you don't have a teacher, if you don't have the kinds of people that Marcus is thanking in the depths and lessons section of meditations, you're not going to become what you're capable of becoming.
You're not going to become anything like Marcus Aurelius. You do notice that Marcus talks about the present moment over and over and over again in meditations. He's reminding yourself it's the only thing you have. It's the only thing you can lose.
I think that's because he, like us, found it so easy to get distracted, to think about the past or the future, to worry about this, to regret that. And the consequence of that is you're losing the only thing you have, he's saying, which is right now. It's going to take a lot out of you. It's going to take more out of you than you think you have.
Marcus Aurelius is in one passage in meditations. He's trying to amp himself to get out of bed in the morning. He goes, oh, it's warmer under the covers here. I like being comfortable.
He says, you weren't made to be comfortable. You weren't made to huddle under the covers and be warm. He said, no, people who love what they do, they wear themselves down doing it. He said, there's a limit on the eating and the sleeping and the fun stuff.
You've got to get out there. You've got to do what your nature demands. And you've got to understand it's going to be hard and it's going to take a lot out of you. In book five, Marcus Aurelius talks about the proper role of philosophy in life.
He says, it's not as your instructor. He says, it's as a kind of medicine, an ointment. He describes a sort of ancient remedy for this eye illness where they crack an egg on you or something like that. But I think his general point he actually is taking from Epictetus, who said, you shouldn't leave my philosophy class feeling good.
You should feel like you just came out of the hospital. He says, it's because you weren't well when you entered. The point of philosophy is to challenge you. It's to make you uncomfortable.
It's to fix the illnesses of the soul of the mind. Even though there are passages of meditations that are soothing and reassuring, a lot of them are jarring. A lot of them make you uncomfortable. A lot of them really make you think, or a lot of them maybe you instinctively disagree with.
But that's the point. Philosophy is not supposed to be an instructor. It's supposed to be a kind of medicine. Even though Marcus really says we must avoid false friendship at all costs, even though he's betrayed by his trusted general, Ividius Cassius, what we know is that Marcus doesn't pardon his heart.
He doesn't close himself off from the world. He's ready, as Michael Scott says, he's ready to be heard again. He constantly is putting himself back out there. But he does learn from this.
He's a little more guarded going forward. He makes this analogy in meditation. He says, you know, you're in the boxing ring and someone's cheating. Maybe they're gouging or biting or scratching.
He says, you don't quit altogether. You just change your fight plan accordingly. This is the core of Robert Greene's books. One passage that Robert Greene quotes from meditations quite often.
You don't quit. You don't storm and go home. But you are aware of who you're dealing with and you adjust accordingly. Everyone's concerned about someone doing violence to them, doing something harmful to them.
But Marcus reminds us that we do violence to our souls when we give in to bad urges, when we give into our temper, when we betray our standards. We do violence to ourselves, to our soul, when we're not the person that we're capable of being. We let those standards lapse. We let ourselves be overwhelmed by destructive emotions or urges when our ego comes into play.
Of course, you have to protect yourself from other people, from outside things, from externals. But to a large degree, you don't control most of that. Most empires collapse from within. Most people's failures are self-inflicted.
Most shame is heaped upon ourselves by our own choices and actions. So protect yourself. That's what you control. Don't do violence to yourself, as Stoic say.
And that's how you lead a good life. it's remarkable that Marcus continually talked about more than anything getting control of his anger. And you know he had a problem with it because of how much he talked about it. He's not talking about, you've got to remember Marcus, jokes are funny.
Come on, man, lighten up a little bit. Right, anger. Yeah, he clearly had a huge problem with it. I think it's probably one of the things he returns to most.
Hadrian, the emperor who sets in motion, Marcus is eventually becoming emperor. There's a story, Hadrian gets mad at his secretary who messes something up and he picks up a pen and he stabs it in the guy's eye. That's the level of power and indulgence that the role you can get away with. The story is that he obviously feels bad about it after and he goes like, I'll give you anything.
Like, I'm so sorry, I'll give you anything to make it better. Can I have my eye back? Which is, I think, a poignant reminder that the things that we do out of anger cannot be undone. What do you see, Grace, with stoicism?
One of the things Marcus talks about a lot is this idea of revenge. Here's the best revenge is to not be like that. This ultimate moment in his life is ill and near death. His most trusted general is sensing that the emperor was weak names himself emperor so he starts a palace coup.
Marcus is not as sick as they thought and he recovers. Now he's faced with this terrible dilemma. There can't be two emperors. This person has put everything into danger and turmoil.
We know what his predecessors would have done in this situation. Hadrian comes to power and just liquidates. Marcus decides not to do that. He can't ignore it.
He can't just let this happen. He says, this is an opportunity. We can teach future generations there's a way to even deal with civil wars. Everything lasts for a day, Marcus Aurelius says at one point in Meditations.
The knower and the known. This is a pretty interesting observation from a man who was the most famous man in the world in that time. A man who's still so famous you can buy coins with his face on them on Etsy. They survive as historical documents worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
This is a guy whose book still pops on and off the bestseller list who we're talking about today in this video. Marcus Aurelius would also remind himself that posthumous fame isn't really worth anything. He's not around to enjoy it. What matters is was he deserving of that in his own time?
Was he good then? Is he famous for the right reasons for doing good stuff for being a good person? There's a beautiful line in Joseph Brodsky's essay about the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome which actually dates back to Marcus' time at the base of which was redesigned by Michelangelo. But Brodsky says something like if Marcus Aurelius is antiquity it is we who are the ruins.
I don't know what that means exactly. There's something beautiful and haunting about it. Maybe it's this idea that when you read meditations you can't help but be struck by the classical beauty and perfection that this is like in some ways the highest expression of human greatness. And then you look at us you look at the way we talk to each other you look at the things we say you look at how we live and act and think and you go yeah we're the old worn out beaten down fallen apart things.
Not the ancient world. The ancient world feels fresh and modern and new and perfect in so many ways. I just love that idea. Marcus Aurelius' antiquity is we who are the ruins.
Gains nothing by going up it loses nothing by coming down. Marcus Aurelius said that we're like a rock we're like a ball sometimes we go up sometimes we come down none of this says anything about us as people. He was saying that of himself he suddenly ascends to the most powerful position in the world but that didn't change who he was that didn't change anything about him that didn't make him better or worse than other people it didn't change what his job was as a human being. This is why he writes in meditations he warns himself against being Caesarified against being stained purple by the robe of the emperor.
He says he has to accept it without arrogance and let it go with indifference and that's a great way to think about success about money about recognition about fame and also about difficulty embarrassment mistakes being laughed at we don't gain anything on the way up we don't lose anything on the way down these things have no purchase on our soul on our identity on our values because they are outside us what matters is who we are what matters is what our values are what matters is not being changed on the way up or the way down. Try to imagine the emperor of Rome this man of enormous power and wealth and prestige trying to tell himself not to be a person of too many words or too many deeds it's pretty remarkable even at that level talking about simplification he's talking about modesty he's talking about restraint he's talking about self-control it's a beautiful thing and a very rare thing to be sure there's a passage in meditation where Mark Smith says when you tuck your child in at night you should save yourself they will not survive till the morning this is a man who buried six children so I don't think he's saying this glibly and I don't think he's trying to practice some kind of mungish philosophical detachment from his child he's trying to say you only get so many of these if you knew this was the last time you were going to do it how would you do it it would not be to skip some of the pages in the book it would not be to come on you know if you want more tranquility in your life you have to do less Marcus really says and the magical thing when you do less when you eliminate the inessential when you stop saying yes to things that don't matter when you stop getting caught up in busy work and nonsense you get the double benefit of doing the essential things better being with your kids your creative work getting outside all the things that matter in life you do better when you do less stuff he says when you do less you get the double satisfaction of doing the important things better so much of what we do it's because we think we have to because other people are doing it because we're afraid to say no but you have to do less when you do less you do more better Marcus really builds his leadership philosophy around four T ideas four scope virtues courage, discipline, justice, wisdom Marcus tries always to live and lead by these four virtues when he says the obstacle is the way that's what he means it doesn't mean necessarily that as a leader you can use everything to make more money or to win more games or whatever your organization does he's saying that everything you encounter as a leader is a chance to embody to demonstrate one of these ideas I have them tattooed on my arm as a reminder of courage discipline, justice, wisdom in one of my favorite passages in meditation's work it says try to be like the rock next to the ocean that the raging sea crashes around it says crashes against it stops and eventually falls still around to me this is a beautiful metaphor of what stillness is it's about being at peace in a world that's not at peace it's about slowing down in a world that's speeding up faster than ever I love running next to the ocean which is a reminder of this metaphor the idea that we need pockets of stillness even inside the craziness that we don't control what's happening in the outside world but we control how we are our dispositions our reaction our strength against that as a bulwark against that craziness and it's been a crazy month for sure but I have had some moments of that stillness I try to be like the rock I try to watch the sea crashing against it and I try to stop and always look for those embodiments of those stillness metaphors so I can carry them back with me be like the rock that the waves crash against be the cliff next to the ocean and so I think of all the exercises in meditation that's one that we can all practice come up with the epithets for the self the rules the descriptors for your character that you want to live and model day in and day out we know that Marcus Aurelius doesn't want to be emperor in fact he breaks down and cries when he is told he's going to be emperor because he knew how many bad emperors there were I also think he probably had a little bit of imposter syndrome he wasn't someone who sought out power and so when power came his way he wondered if he could do it he had the skills to be strong enough smart enough firm enough ruthless enough to cut it in this merciless profession but before Marcus becomes emperor he has a dream he dreams that he has shoulders made of ivory that was to him letting himself know that he was strong enough to bear the weight he could do it and in meditations we catch him reminding himself of that lesson that he learned many years ago remind yourself that if it's humanly possible know that you can do it also these people aren't better than you they're not given some gift that you don't have they became who they needed to be they did the work they needed to do they gave themselves the shoulders of ivory that Marcus Aurelius realized deep down he had all along in meditations Marcus Aurelius says people who love what they do bear themselves down doing it he says they forget even to sleep and eat so it's 6am I'm a little tired I'm a little burned out but this is what I love I feel so grateful to be able to do it so I try to pause every morning part of my practice is a little bit of gratitude I write in a gratitude journal every day the idea is taking a minute to really appreciate where you are and what you get to do I try to remind myself how much I would have killed a few years ago to be able to do this how I wouldn't have even been able to dream that I'd be able to do this and so the idea of centering yourself a little bit of gratitude practice actually appreciating the absurdity the absurd luck of your situation I don't want it to be lost on me I get to write about philosophy for a living I get to travel all around the world to talk about philosophy my work takes me to a beach in Florida I try to appreciate that I try to soak it in I try to be here for it and I never let that escape me it can only ruin your life if it ruins your character Marcus Aurelius he's saying that other people can't actually harm you they can take away some of your stuff they can insult you they can bother you they can mess up your plan they can't actually harm you unless your character is injured what the Stokes would say what we need to understand is that no one can harm our character but ourselves the bastards can't get you you can turn yourself into a bastard in response and then you lose if you do something in response that harms your character then yes you have been harmed but anything else no matter how big or small nothing can injure you nothing can ruin your life unless it affects your character unless it affects who you are as a person and what kind of things you do and don't do the source of conflict between parents and children so much of the time is about parents having opinions about things that they don't have to have opinions about you always have the power to have no opinion one of the hardest things for humans to do is admit error and that's why cutting our loss is so difficult but Marx really says when someone points out that you've been wrong when they show you the flaws and your reasoning they're not insulting you that doesn't make you an idiot you're getting new information that allows you to make a new decision and thus improve like if you picked a stock or you started working for a company you invested in something you have to realize that what you knew then is different than what you know now and if what you know now changes the decision you would make then or it sheds new light on the decision you would make then you have to be able to switch you have to be willing to cut your losses don't think of admitting error as something to be ashamed of it's something you should be proud of it shows that you have the ability as a sister said to remain a free agent to not be wedded because of your identity because of statements you've made but to be able to embrace the current moment in the future by changing and adjusting by selling by disavowing something by walking away and stop throwing good money after bad cut your losses and move on the emperor of Rome would have had beautiful palaces Marcus from a rich family would have had access to country estates and beautiful houses and he could afford the finest resorts or retreats and he reminds himself though that people who try to get away from it all are chasing something that doesn't exist he would have liked that buddhist idea that wherever you go there you are he says you can retreat into yourself anytime you want he says you can find replenishment and rest and relaxation inside your own soul and I think that's what he's doing in meditation that's what he's doing in books that's what he's doing when he would go on walks when he would look at the world poetically he realized that he didn't have to lead to some exotic location all the things he needed and wanted were right there they weren't external things at all they were inside of him just as they are inside all of us so we can imagine when Marcus comes to the end of life and realizes he's going to die I wonder if he thought about the passage that he wrote in book 1036 he says it doesn't matter how good a life you've led there will still be people standing around the bed who will welcome the sad event his point was if you're doing this for validation if you're doing this to be loved if you're doing this to be remembered I mean to be remembered he says it's silly because you're not going to be around but the point is the rewards for doing the right thing have to be the right thing you can't be doing it to be like you can't care about what other people think you can't try to please everyone all the time be everyone's favorite especially as a leader so Marcus had to constantly be aware of this I remember if when he actually came to the end of his life if he thought about the fact that maybe secretly some of these people were glad he would be gone soon and if he had to come to terms with those words that he'd written so long ago this other brilliant medication on the ephemerality of life he says you're afraid of death because you won't be able to do this anymore you won't be able to wait in line at the DMV you won't be on another stupid pointless conference call so much of what we spend our life doing is a complete waste and then we say we're afraid of death we say we feel like we don't have enough time you do have enough time you just have to stop wasting it there's immense amount of control or influence that the translator has over how they choose to use this word or that word and that can mean a world of difference but also like when you just get that crappy translation that's in the public domain or the cheapest one on Amazon just sell yourself short I feel so lucky I got the Hayes translation early the point is books are an investment you shouldn't cheap out you shouldn't get the cheapest one you should get the one that's right that's best and there's a reason these things cost money is that they're worth money my life would have been totally different had I gotten a crappier translation a cheaper translation where I said I'll just get it from the library I'll skim through it and I'll get it back no reading is an investment books are an investment and you have to invest accordingly I don't know how to explain to you that you have to care about other people that's like one of my favorite article headlines of all time I think it came out in 2017 but often times people who study Stoicism sort of miss the point yes it's an individualistic philosophy yes it's about maximizing your personal resilience it's about focusing on what you control but Marcus Aurelius also talks about the common good like 40 or 50 times in meditations he says famously what's bad for the P is bad for the high that we're all in this together the Stoics believe that we were part of this enormous organism that we all had a role we all had a job that we all individually matter so yes Stoicism is an individualistic philosophy yes it's about focusing on what you control but you have to also care about other people and if you think that Stoicism is a formula for being a better sociopath being indifferent to suffering or pain of other people you're completely missing the point of what this philosophy is about it would have been my third or fourth reading to Marcus Aurelius that I caught this line because you could leave life right now let that determine what you do and say and think it's not that you will die tomorrow and you should try heroin or go to an origin it's that you never know when life is going to end and so you can't take it for granted you cannot take it for granted if you want more wisdom inspired from the Stoics I send out one Stoic themed email every single morning totally for free you can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email no spam you can unsubscribe at any time I think it's the best thing that I do there's a community of hundreds of thousands of Stoics all over the world we'd love to have you at dailystoic.com slash email