Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. We're busy, we're tired, we have so much to do, we had dreams once sure, but they slowly deflated to mortgage the kids the job watching TV, that's how we fill our days. It's a slow downward spiral that Bruce brings the insane about in racing in the street. Some guys, they just give up living, he sang, and start dying a little by little, piece by piece.
If you're not that guy, you at least know him or her. They're the mainstay of the modern world, overworked, under-sexed, overtired, and under-appreciated. Facebook is to blame, right? The capitalist pigs are responsible, yeah?
It's because of the 24-hour news cycle. Certainly none of those things help. But the truth is that this is a timeless problem. It goes back much further than Bruce or even the century.
Because Seneca spoke about those guys too. How much time has been lost to groundless anguish? He writes, greedy desire, the charms of society. How little is left to you from your own store of time.
Wake up, he says, stop sleepwalking, stop giving away what you can never give back. That's from his essay, The Shortness of Life, where he tries to get the reader. As Bruce Springsteen does in his best songs, to realize that you are dying before your time. We only get one life.
Once time ticks by, it never comes back. Yes, each of us will die. That's a fact. But for the moment we are alive, which is why we have to live, which is why we have to protect our time, our dreams, and our spirit.
We can't give it up piece by piece. We can't start dying before our time. We have to live now while we still can.