Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Reduce wants, increase happiness. The Stoics knew that wanting less increases gratitude just as wanting more obliterates it. Epictetus focused much of his teachings on helping his students reduce this destructive habit of wanting more.
In it, he saw the key to a happy life and to relationships by practicing the art of wanting less and being grateful for the portion that we already have before us. We are hopping off the so-called hedonic treadmill and taking a real step on the path to a life of real contentment. That's what we're journaling about this week in the Daily Stoic Journal. That's where this little meditation comes from.
We've got three quotes from Epictetus. He says, remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet, as something is being passed around and comes to you, reach your hand out and take only a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don't stop it.
Hasn't yet come. Don't burn and desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you. Act this way with children espouse towards position with wealth. One day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods.
That's Epictetus' incoridian. When children stick their hand down, a narrow goodie jar, they can't get their full fist out and start crying. Drop a few treats and you will get it out. Curb your desire.
Don't set your heart on so many things and you will get what you need. That's Epictetus' Discourses 3.9. Freedom isn't secured by filling up your heart's desire, but by removing your desire. Epictetus' Discourses.
It's not that the Stoics didn't like stuff. I mean, they did. They enjoyed life. But they also knew that there is such thing as too much of a good thing.
And they tried to enjoy what they had while they had it, but also not be dependent on it and also more importantly, not desire and achieve and acquire so much that it becomes its own burden. And I think that's something we miss, friends, even about the Epicurians. We think the Epicurians were these sort of pleasure lovers, and in a sense they were. But it was the simple pleasures.
It was the right amount that brought them pleasure. And too much becomes not only not a pleasure, but a punishment. There's a joke I like someone attended one of Aristotle's dinners and they said, Aristotle, you know what I love about your dinners? I don't regret them the following morning.
So this idea of moderation is so essential. It's the key to happiness. The right amount, I remember Steve, my editor and collaborator on the day of the day of the day of the day was so journal, said, you know what he said, moderation in all things and some things not at all. And I was beautifully expressed and that's kind of how I try to live my life.
Santa could probably took it too far in one direction, maybe Epic Tita took it too far in the other direction and maybe Marcus Aurelius is right there in the Aristotelian mean enough, but not too much. There's two beautiful metaphors there from Epic Tita that I think are worth pausing on. He talks about the kid sticking their hand in the candy jar to get too much. They'd let some of it go, they could get it, but since they can't let it go, they get none of it.
That's a beautiful image. But this other one that we're life at a banquet. And I don't know about you, but whenever I'm at a buffet or a banquet, I tend to eat too much and then it's unhappy. It's unpleasurable.
As Aristotle said, you regret it the next day. But if you can find a way to enjoy it, that the food is not really the point, the food is extra, the point is the conversation, the company, the experience and to take too much, to take more than you're shared, to be the strato, that's coming over here. I want seconds of this. This is to take yourself out of the present moment in a sense.
It ultimately ends up sort of punishing you and it takes the fun and the joy out of it. So moderation in all things. He's being explicit, this banquet thing is a metaphor. He's acting this way with children espoused towards position with wealth.
And one day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods. The less you need, the less you want, the freer you are, the happier you are, and the more you enjoy what you do have. That idea of enough, that idea of the right amount is key, and that's what I'd love for you guys to spend some time thinking about this week. What is enough?
Do you have it? Do you really need what you think you need? Do you just want it? What would happen if you actually got it?
Would it really fulfill the desire of the way you think it would? Maybe not. Be well, be moderate. Talk soon.