Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Okay, so my February got blown up, and it's a pretty absurd chain of events.
Certainly, life can be interrupted by really bad negative things, a diagnosis, a change in the economy, somebody says or does something, and it causes all sorts of problems in a negative way. But we sometimes forget how often our lives can just be positively impacted, can go in a very exciting new direction as a result of something you never would have guessed would happen. And that happened for me when I got an Instagram DM from a producer at Harpo. If you've never heard of Harpo, maybe just spell it backwards, right?
That's Oprah's production company. And they said, hey, Oprah just read your book, and I'd like you to come to an interview with her in Maui. And I said, what? Is this real?
At first, I actually thought it was a scam. People at podcasts know this. There's a scam sort of going around where someone will message you, they're pretending to be a producer for a big show, like Rogan or Huberman, or actually, we almost fell for one the other day, where they're just impersonating a producer, and then they start to get you on the hook, and then they, oh, we need this, or we need that, and they start asking you for financial information, personal information. I thought that's kind of what it was at first.
And then I got on the phone with the producer, and no, it was very real. It was Harpo. So I got my whole family, including my in-laws, on a flight to Maui, took my kids out of school for a week. They had a four-day weekend, so we kind of stretched it a little bit, got a nice, lovely, I don't want to say vacation, but lovely working trip out of it.
I'll remember that always. That was lovely. You might have seen some of the shots in the day-to-day videos we've been doing. And Oprah had read The Obstacles of the Way.
My first question is, but how did she hear about it? It was a 10-year-old book. It turns out she heard about not just my book, but stoicism in general from a new novel. This novel, Loan Behold, was sitting on my wife's bedstand.
It had been mailed to me, but she stole it and didn't give it to me by Maria Semple. You may have heard of her other book, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, which was a huge seller a few years back. Anyway, she has a new book called Go Gentle. And in the novel, the main character is a stoic philosopher, a philosopher who's tutoring the children of this wealthy family in New York City.
And Oprah had loved Maria's book. She'd selected it for a book club, but it also sent her down a rabbit hole of stoicism, which is how she found The Obstacle is the Way. So as soon as I got back, I emailed Maria and said, we've never met, but you changed the direction of my life, and I loved your book. Do you want to come to the Daily Stoic podcast?
I'll let you know when my interview on the Oprah podcast is out. But this conversation is going to come first because Maria's new book is out now. So you might be thinking a novel about stoicism, I'm not into it. Let me tell you, Maria knows her shit.
This is probably one of the most in-depth conversations in the stoicism that I've ever had on the podcast. Like, I got to nerd out more about it with her than I have with academics and translators of the stoics. So this conversation is great. Maria's new book is out now, and it's lovely.
I think you will really like it. She's the author of four novels, Today Will Be Different, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and This One's Mine, The New One, Go Gentle. And that book, Oprah decided to make her book club pick, which is an incredible, like, sort of holy grail in publishing. Before she was an author, she wrote for shows like Arrested Development, and 90210, Mad About You, Ellen, and more.
She signed a bunch of copies of Go Gentle at The Painted Porch, some of the first copies that she had in hand. You can follow Maria on Instagram, at Maria Semple. And I think you're really going to like this episode. Let's go.
So I went to sleep last night, and I thought that I heard, like, nightingales chirping. And then I kind of, like, in the middle of the night, I woke up and heard kind of nightingales and went back to sleep. And then I woke up in the morning, and there were, like, mama birds feeding baby birds. And it was beautiful, but then I woke up and realized it was the toilet leaking the whole time.
And so I thought that's, like, a perfect stoic thing of reframing. It's all how you decided to see it. It's beautiful or it's disgusting. That's right.
And so I just felt like I was in this magical, like, fairy wonderland, like, woodland of birds night and day. And then I realized it was, like, that goddamn toilet's leaking. And if I had recognized it as the toilet leaking, I would have had a horrible night's sleep. And I would have just been worked myself up.
And then it was, but it really was, it's just the power of if you reframe things. I thought that was a good little mini lesson in that. One of my favorite memes is, like, you go and visit the Grand Canyon and it's okay. And then it's, like, the sunset in a random grocery store parking lot.
And, you know, like, and you're just like, why is this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's actually one of my favorite passages in meditation for Marx to do. It's sort of, like, observing all these beautiful things in nature that actually aren't that beautiful, but pretty ordinary.
He talks about, like, you know, like the way a grain is kind of just bending under its own weight. Or he talks about, you know, flex a foam on a board's mouth. Or my favorite, only a writer would notice this. He's like, the way that bread breaks open in the oven.
Right, right. And we don't really know why it does that. It just does it. And he's like, the baker's not doing it on purpose.
Yeah. But it's still a benefit of the baker's art. You go, oh, all of this stuff, because the Romans had such a focus on poetry in place. He just learned turns of phrase.
And he's applying it to seemingly ugly things. Oh, yes. And not beautiful things and managing to find beauty in them. Yeah, that's so great.
And that's, I mean, why I love Epictetus is I just think he brings just all this potential out of everyday, like, objects. And just anything you come across during the day, you just see the opportunity it is, you know, for growth or, you know, just to shift your perspective. He's very, like, domestic, which is what I like about him. Yeah, I just wrote this email for Daily Stoke.
Daily Stoke, where James Baldwin is walking with his mentor. Is it James Buford? I forget it. It's something Buford.
And they're walking in New York City, and as they're crossing the street, Buford stops Baldwin and he points and goes, do you see that? And Baldwin's like, it's a muddy puddle. And he's like, no, no, no, look. From this angle, you can see the oil on top of the water creating, like, that rainbow that oil does in the reflection.
They can see the buildings in the reflection. And he's saying that Buford in seeing allows him to see. And that that's kind of the, I think, in a way, that's what a philosopher does. That's what an artist does, which is it sees beauty in the mundane, or it sees potential in the ugly or the opportunity inside the obstacle.
And they allow other people, in pointing it out, allow other people to see it. Yeah, very much so. I think that's really why I love the Stoics is because it really lets me unleash my imagination on just everyday occurrences or just the natural world or something. As I feel like, unlike kind of faith or religions that don't, I can, I really like get fired up and like tweak out on like, wait, what's a different way I can see this?
This is all the different perspective and it really engages like the writer in me. Well, sometimes people, they're like, okay, so what are the Stoics telling you to do? And it's like, it's actually not really telling you to do anything. It's just these kind of like different ways of running something through your brain.
It's not actually doing anything in the way that meditation is sitting there and doing, it's like, no, no, you're just, it's just different slices on the same situation. That's the thing. It's like, oh, you don't control the New York City is what it is, but you control it. If you look at the puddle as something ugly and disgusting, or you look at it as something kind of beautiful and modern and surreal.
That's right. It really is good for the artistic mind. And I think it just, you don't have to be an artist to do it, but I mean, I would hope that people who are into Stoicism would understand that like, oh, I didn't get a job. I didn't get the job I wanted, but then, oh, there's all these other doors open to you.
And what could it be? You just didn't get a shitty job. You actually would have hated it. It would have been horrible.
And you can decide what story you're going to talk about. That's right. And it's actually really fun. Okay, so give me your Stoicism origin story.
It's a mystery. I don't quite know how I came across it, but I feel like, I thought it was in the New York Times, like the Stone, remember they used to have, they have a philosophy column. And I read about it and it seemed really wise. And like, it just seemed like something I could do.
And already just reading about it brought me relief. Now, I've now since gone back and tried to find that article and I can't find it, but I just read something about it. And what I figured it must have been, this would have been maybe 15 years ago. And I think probably it was about use wisdom, apply wisdom to figure out what you can't control, what you cannot control, only worry about what, you know, the serenity prayer basically is like, which we all love.
We were all like, whoa, the serenity prayer. But it's like, oh, this is the 300 BC serenity prayer, you know? Did it come to you at some time when you really needed that? Or why do you think it struck you?
Yeah, well, I think generally I'm, I struggle with my emotions, I'd say, with just like being, I would like being ruled by my emotions, you know? And so this felt like it could bring relief to that, you know? And so I read, I think William Irvine, that book, that was like the first book that I read. And it was really about just the guide to the good life, which is basically like, you're just going to be a mess and have no idea what you're doing.
And you're going to die and go like, what was that about, man? I had no plan. I had no idea of like what I had and I wasted it. And you can like live with intention.
And so that was interesting to me. And then quickly I just went into the stoics themselves, you know, Seneca. And then probably Marcus Aurelius. I really love Epictetus.
He's your guy? Yeah, Epictetus. It's so funny. I feel like Marcus is your guy, right?
Yeah, yeah. What you are getting when you sit down and read Epictetus is literally a man preaching. You're listening to a professor speak about stoicism. And then that's filtered through Arian to his students.
And I mean, I think there's a lot of great stuff in Epictetus. The Inkeridian of Epictetus, I like better than the discourses of Epictetus. Right, exactly. Because it is filtered down and edited in a way that you're getting to the core of it.
I just think Marcus Aurelius, to be doing that in private and to write that well, it is unimaginable. Right. Like he's just such a great writer. I think that's why I like Marcus Aurelius.
And then Seneca is also an incredible writer. Such a good writer. Oh my gosh. So it's kind of hard to compare Epictetus to him because he was doing something very different.
You're listening to transcripts of a lecture. I think that's maybe why I said he was preaching. Well, I love that Sharon LaBelle translation. And I think that she really does new age it up a bit.
Translation. Yeah, translation, which is kind of wild. And in fact, in my book, Go Gentle Not to Pippets to My Book, but I do. Yeah, I've interviewed her.
Yeah, so I make her a philosopher. When I was thinking about what do I do with my main character, I want to make her a philosopher, like a stoic. But then I thought I'd have to have her learn Greek after she was a TV comedy writer. And it's really interesting.
We believe that. Or Latin or whatever it was. But then I read the Sharon LaBelle and just kind of read the American, I mean, the English, the English translation. She translated it not from one language to another, but from one context to another.
Which is, he's a service. Yes, and so that's kind of why I felt like, okay, I can make, that's what my character does, is to kind of dumb it down and make it kind of nice for the people. You know, and so maybe that's why I like it is because it's very good. It was one of the first stoic things I read.
And actually, I wonder if it even informs my understanding of Epictetus because I was a little disappointed when I read Epictetus. I read that first and then I read Epictetus and I was like, are you sure he didn't say it that way? And I was like, no, yeah, he didn't. And so it's like, he said it works.
And so she does such a great job of stealing that. That's a classic, great introductory stoic. Right. And so what I did was, and then of course, I got your book, The Daily Stoic, which I just loved.
And I have my copy here. I'm very excited for you to sign it. I just, in my email today, got confirmation that I have sent in from my publisher the 10-year anniversary of The Daily Stoic. We just did, we changed a bunch of the entries and whatever.
So it's now 10 years old. So I'd say with The Daily Stoic, plus The Stoics themselves, I would just every morning sit and read The Stoics and then start to try to come up with how to practice Stoicism. Because I didn't know how to do it. I kind of looked, maybe there were meetups, but they seemed like kind of scary and like weirdos or whatever.
And I didn't know that I wanted to do it. I don't want to just drive an hour and a half away and then you're going to be scared by everyone you meet and then turn against your passion as a result. So I didn't do that. And so I then just started on my own coming up with what does it mean for me to be a Stoic?
And so I came up with my philosophy of life based on William Irvine. And it took me years to kind of refine that. And then I have like a daily, you know, maybe like five steps Stoic practice that I would just do by myself, which now just seems so kind of tragic and sweet that I just invented my own little Stoic practice. What is your five step daily Stoic practice?
Well, so what I do is I write down my philosophy of life. Let me read it just so I don't stumble on it. My daily goal is to bring my actions, desires and thoughts into harmony with my philosophy of life. My philosophy of life is virtue equals freedom.
The four Stoic virtues are wisdom, courage, justice, temperance. Virtue is the only good. Its pursuit is the only guarantee of achieving abiding good cheer, secure joy and a tranquil mind. Okay, so that's like what I realize is my philosophy of life.
And then what I do is I go to the virtue list. I think wisdom comes first because I think it applies to all the other ones. I think that without knowing what's in your control and what's out of your control, you can't like you need wisdom for that. So I think that that's the crown of it, you know, and then because they all are the things that you can control.
So I feel like somehow that goes to the top. Why sometimes I think wisdom can be misleading, but if you saw it as discernment, then okay, yeah, sure, because it's telling you what level of courage to bring to a situation, telling you what situations to, what the right thing to do in a situation is, how much is too much and not enough, right? That's right. It's shaping and informing the volume on the other three virtues.
That's right. So that's number one. And do I have, see, what do I have there in number two? Okay, see, I'll tell you why justice next, which is kind of funny, is that I was talking to Donald Robertson once and I had courage next and he kind of bullied me into putting justice next because it's not funny because he was like, well, and he did this, he was like, why isn't justice higher up?
Well, yeah, it's like courage, courage for what? Yeah, right. Like what is the courage being applied to? And if it's not to the right thing, then it's not so impressive.
It's certainly not virtue. That's right. That's right. And also the thing about justice, I think, I mean, it's been such a years long process is justice feels, I mean, all of the words are kind of problematic, like virtue, you know, like it's not cool going to dinner and going, yeah, all I can do is care about virtue.
It just seems preachy and justice seems preachy. I know it could not be in the title of the book. Yeah, yeah, you can't do it. You know, I don't care about the law.
Yeah, I don't want to hear it from you. You know, I'm not going to have you tell me what to do. That's just what unfortunately applies now. So, but once I understood it's about like being kind to other people and treating people well and then just kind of understanding, like it's kind of a boundary thing in a way is justice.
It's ethics and standards. Yes, and so, and then it's what do you put your effort into in terms of other people, you know, and so that to me is like very rich territory and then I probably have courage and so courage is just so great, you know, it's like about work to me. It's like I do, it's to me courage is about work and it's just hard work. I feel like to just to do the writing, to go to the gym, to do the hard things, you know, is to me.
This is where I disagree with the stoics and I disagree with you. Okay. When I did this here, I think endurance and resilience, I think they go down in temperance and self-discipline. Okay, okay.
So you think courage is the showing up? Yes, see, like if I'm in a plank, it's like courage. I'm just going like courage, you know? That's self-discipline.
Okay, no, but it's so much. One part of you wants to do the easy thing and another part of you wants to do the hard thing and you have to have the will and the strength to get there. Okay, getting into the plank position is discipline. Being in plank is courage for me.
Do you know what I mean? It's like the physical thing of just like fighting against the plank. I would say the decision to go to the gym and be vulnerable and work on yourself is courage, but deciding to do an extra mile on the treadmill is not courage, it's self-discipline. Okay, I get that.
Okay, I get that. But courage now, you know what's interesting that courage for me is now turning into is more about, it's like contempt for conformity, you know? Yes, definitely. And I think that's so relevant now and I feel like just it's almost the life project is just now that we're all in this kind of digital panopticon of just like are we thinking for ourselves?
Classic moral courage. Right, so it's like moral courage I think is just becoming really urgent to me personally and it's so easy to slip into just the mob, you know? So that's really important to me. And then temperance, you call it self-discipline, right?
That's interesting. Yeah, just because temperance is also a shitty word. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, that's like, yeah, Epictetus said that you could summarize all his ghostism in two words, persist and resist.
Right. So it's doing the things you should do not doing the things you shouldn't do to me that's that's temperance in a nutshell see i think i like temperance personally because i think like i talk too much or i talk a lot and i just want to be like don't talk so much it is but i think temperance there's just like a coolness to it it's just like okay just chill you know and i feel like i personally yeah so i feel like i might need that and it's about like not talking so much not you know talking less you know talking wisely humility knowing your place i mean a really big thing for me just like the psychology of it is just that that's really freeing is just knowing your place in the system you're in because we can all just go in and feel like we're the biggest thing it's all about me all that matters is like what i'm going to take away from the daily stoic podcast you know whatever but it's like no this whole system here that's happening and so i feel like especially when it comes to business stuff when i was working in hollywood you know when and i just had my i'd say values you know skewed is you would just want it so badly you know and then a project going would just be you have so low control over everything right and these other people have lives they have problems and so i think temperance to me is just like i call it i call it like right sizing my life you know where you just like put yourself properly in the scheme of things and i think that's a real spiritual practice okay so to go back to the five minute sort of daily practice so you write those things and then you just think about these for no no what i do is i figure out what i have to do that day like whatever it is and then i go to the virtue list and i will pick one or circle one or two and it's all in a journal and like i literally copied down my philosophy you write you write this first part every single day every single day i write it and i write that every day and it used to be and i write about this in go gentle but for 10 years it was virtue equals happiness and only a couple months ago i changed it to virtue equals freedom because i think freedom is so much bigger than happiness sure right and that's where i realized that i think i was doing it for happiness for a long time and now what i've achieved is freedom and i'm like no that's the fucking bomb is freedom and so that to me is virtue equals freedom and so so i've been refining so then i figure out what virtues i need and then my next thing is to clarify my purpose and i have the quotes there of my purpose quotes that i love which is like seneca without and this goes to what do you have to do today what am i trying to do what is a successful day for me what are the challenges i'm likely to face today exactly what's what do i need to bring my stoicism to exactly and i'm a writer many of the days when i'm working on a novel it's like my writing it's just about get off the internet don't look at my phone it's really just a whole elaborate system to not be on the internet basically it's for me you know what i think it's very relevant for that reason and so that's what i do is then just kind of like get my get my game head on and those i just read you know and i just kind of like fire myself up if you don't know what port you're sailing to no wind is favorable love of bustle is not industry you know it's not that life is short so we waste too much of it we're defined by what we devote our energy to don't do anything with a begrudging spirit agree to do with promise and courage so you just you kind of run through these quotes as kind of helpful reminders yeah to fire myself up for the game you know so i do that and then what i do is i go to the i pick one of my daily journal exercises and so and it's like desire what i have desire what's in my control turn have to into get to it's why you clearly struggle with that because you have it twice you turn have to into get to and then you write i get to do this i mean this is like my little book is very revealing about my inner soul no that's what it is it's like i protest too much i don't want to do it but i know i have to i'm resenting it and you're like how do i flip this and focus on that i'm alive exactly and that i by the way this is my dream it's why i am living the dream i just heard this stat that shocked me given that i uh hear from the sales staff and my publisher quite a bit the status sales teams spend about 50 percent of their time on admin work instead of selling relationship building closing deals which means they're not selling right and that's where today's sponsor comes in pipe drive it's a simple intelligent crm tool for small and medium businesses pipe drive was built from the ground up to strip away that manual work that stuff that's wasting their time taking your sales team away from doing the thing you pay them to do which is sell stuff they've got smart automations to handle repetitive tasks and you can even customize these 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spitting you know don't do it reluctantly and with bitterness and i think i know complaining is to me under temperance right i think i put that under temperance and so so to me that's what i do is i pick something and then i really frame my day that way you know it's like i get to do this it's like i also love desire what you have that to me is like it's just it's like a drug to me it's like i'm sitting i'm like oh you know what i wish i had is like this apartment on the upper west side it's like i have an apartment on the upper west side i try to remind myself hey you wanted to write one book yes you know you're you're so like this is what you wanted more than anything you get to do it you are doing it focus on that not and there's a great there's a marcus realist quote where he says think about the things that you have yes and how if you didn't have them how desperately you'd want them and also i think it's worth saying maybe this is less dope but i go think about how many people would kill yes to have this because they're currently starving in a hut somewhere or because they're on the outside clawing for just one of the 20 breaks that you've got in your career like even though it's so tempting to be jealous of what others have it's helpful to be reminded of how jealous others are of you even you know if you're in a jail in america it's better than being like there are people in a jail cell in some other country who would kill to be incarcerated here that's right no it isn't so i feel like i'm so living the dream and also i think probably like you my days can be very can be very especially now that i have a book coming out there's all these different and i love that i love novelty and i love oh i get to do an interview today and then tomorrow i have there's a photo shoot or i don't there's just all these events and things and and that's kind of fun to realize i get to do this because i my last book was 10 years ago you know and that this is all i ever wanted out of this book was to finish the book and have the book like actually work you know now that it is it really is something i dreamed of for 10 years and felt like in the depths of despair like oh this book's not going to work i'm never going to write another book you know maybe i just everything i have to say i already put in books so this is such a wonderful like chapter and i've got to just bring every amount of positivity to it and i think optimism i have under courage is that what you say no i think hope is both uh courage and i would say wisdom right oh wisdom okay because i'm very i'm also kind of drifting into the optimism thing as being like very powerful because i think i maybe discounted it for a while of just like oh who needs that famous quote from from seneca in here about hope and fear being the same oh but i don't know if i totally agree you know what i mean it's a powerful idea but i also think there is something about i think the shows could use a bit more hope yes yes i agree and i'll say hope people's fear that really was my gateway concept it's maybe seneca's first letter i feel like it's in that letter he's quoting another right it's like isn't one and i think that was the first direct thing i read of the stoics was the letters of seneca and i read that and i was just like gay mom that is like crazy you know but i understood and the other i think it's almost in the same sentence is that the soldier doesn't isn't dragged by fate or no no it's like you need to willingly go into your fate you can't just complain and drag your feet that really was was the thing that i was like okay this is really interesting and i want to do more of this this idea of saying to yourself like hey i get to do this i'm lucky to me one of the places it's really important to remind yourself of that is as a parent you know like okay how many couples are struggling with infertility and how many parents have buried how many families have buried a job you get to do this yes you you and your spouse struggled hoped wanted this this thing that you're now like oh well they just go to sleep or like oh i can't believe we gotta drive like all the stuff that bothers you about a parent you were dreaming of being lucky enough to get to do and you do get to do it and then it's worth reminding yourself that at some point in the not-so-distant future you will be jealous of as you're dragging your kids to the airport you're carrying the car seats and you're they're whining and they want a pretzel and then 10 years from now you'll be walking through an airport without your children and you will see someone else do it and you will be filled with nostalgia and jealousy of that person who you are in the middle of complaining about you'll be jealous of yourself and mad that you begrudgingly got through this moment instead of going like i only get to do this yes it's so amazing you use that that example because that's when almost like my my deepest sadness is going through airports is about that of like oh the family trips and we used to go and she was a little and we missed the plane and have one like carrier and run and all that stuff that just seems so awful at the time and now whenever i see families traveling it just like hits me in a place that stoicism cannot touch you know it's like very powerful yeah i was talking to dr pressman she wrote this great parenting book and i was telling her how my son is just utterly obsessed with hamilton and he listens to it every now and he goes but you can be in the car for once turn on hamilton and i was like i have to listen to this hamilton one more time i'm gonna kill myself and she was like i went through the same thing with my daughter and then she got over it and she was like the other day it came on in the car yes and i was just she was like i was just overwhelmed with a wave of sadness and nostalgia and affection for this like thing that was such a part of my life yes you know it's not going to last no and you're in the middle of begrudgingly resenting it and enduring it and suffering through it as if not that long in the future you would give anything to go back to this moment that you're wasting well something that's related to that is the vietnamese monk talks about the non-toothic state that basically when you have a toothache you're like all i want is this toothache to be over like i do anything not to have a toothache and then you don't have a toothache and you totally discount it and so he's saying like go you go through life like realize you're in a non-toothic state so i always think about that the non-toothic state yeah you have the thing that you desperately wanted and in the future will desperately want again yes but you can't allow yourself to just be in it but if you go hey i get to do i get to drive them through traffic today you know i get to take the trash out today i get to whatever it is you tell yourself i get to do it one thing we know for certain is you don't get to do it an unlimited amount that's right that's right so so that really helps so this is your show practice there any other parts of journaling well well then then what i do is then if there's if i'm if i'm really flipping out then i have this many step protocol for how to calm myself down about it and that's that's many steps but that's if you flip through the great pages are like my journaling how long does this practice take you every morning well and then of course i read the stoics every day it's really just seneca's letters meditations no i'm reading one of them and then i just like you know get to the end of it and read the next one read the next one yeah and then i do the daily stuff every day yeah and so i do that every day but i maybe read two or three or whatever it's not like i do it according to the day i really do set a timer so i don't read too much philosophy because it is so easy to read that's the thing that you want to just beg everyone understand when they think like oh this thing going around reading philosophy and it's like it's so easy it's so easy to read this stuff it's so pleasurable it doesn't take any learning to just get into seneca's letters they're amazing and then and then yeah you gotta have the self-discipline to close the thing and go to your actual real life and then i write but i'm really like got my head in it you know i'm like let's let's go you know and what's interesting is when you write a novel like my novel is about all these different things you know it's about a woman who's single and in early 50s and kind of starting life over it's about philosophy there's all this stuff about misogyny and sexual assault in it it's a romance it's art theft it's like all this crazy shit in this book it's crazy it's really a lot and now that the book is kind of getting out in the world really the thing that people are going nuts over is the stoicism which and moms and things that i never would have thought and people i mean i've gotten so many messages already like i want to read a door stoic books i want to read the you know i want to read her books and so i i thank you in my book in the back of my acknowledgements but also the other writers that i think people should go to but there's this tendency that people don't want to read the stoics themselves i'm sure you found this right and there's this resistance i mean but lucky for you they want to read you so that's like i always try to remind people like nobody said it better than the stoic yes yes and so people go like what would be a good book from a 16 year old it's like if your 16 year old lived in ancient greece or rome they'd just be reading the original and they thought that you were more than mentally capable of reading that and i think we sometimes baby kids and people about books like there is no one who is not capable of reading the stoics what i try to do in my books is as you try to do in yours is just take the ideas and illustrate them yes or portray them in what it might look like in either a real or fictional situation which is different than laying out the idea itself right right no you use all the great like stories throughout history i mean i feel like i could i probably know when jeopardy may be coming second in jeopardy just from reading all about your historical examples that should be crisscrossing my two favorite things stoicism in history yeah yeah i do think stoicism like people tend to assume that everyone who's interested in stoicism is a dude right right it has a masculine energy i think that's changing but but why do you think it struck you as a woman and why do you think women who are reading the novel are so lit up about that theme interesting well and that's what i love about the oprah aspect of it is i feel like wow maybe this is going to like turn moms and you know women onto stoicism which would be like just so weird and i would be so it just makes me so happy the thought of that but and i haven't really given it much thought but now that you say it i think that i offer a kind of a softer version of stoicism in my novel which i feel like i've taken that i've engineered for myself over the years and that and that you feel you're softening well so it's actually it becomes the story of my novel which is that i think when i first discovered stoicism i really love the idea that there are like no victims that everything that happened oh this is how i interpret it everything that happened to me it was a fault of my character and i was responsible for my unhappiness let's just say i still believe that but i think in the early days it was very self-punishing of me you know and it was self-punishing and so i think that chicks don't take to that you know as well as men do i think you know but but for a while i'd say it's really liberating when you're like struggling with your emotions or your neuroses or whatever these patterns you can't get out of for a moment there's just this like self-empowerment which is like i did it to myself you know like you don't want to be a victim you didn't offend me i took offense i took offense and so you're like i can work with this you know and i can do it and so i think that what that can lead to is just being too like harsh on yourself you know and too i don't just i don't think you can be too forgiving of other people but just like keeping yourself maybe in situations that aren't good because you're like i gotta just got through this you know it's all me it's all me and and i think that may that i personally don't like that that i am i know it's called go gentle you know and it really is ultimately it's it that's the journey of adora hazard is that she you know starts out being really harsh and it's like well you know i look for the quote and it wasn't really the quote i misremembered it but it was like be hard on yourself and easy on others isn't it marcus strict with yourself tolerant of others right that's marcus right okay so i felt that i kind of overdone in my youth you know and and so and it's not that i moved into like victimhood or blame or whatever but there's just kind of a loosening of of right now i feel like it's all so age really helps just a lot of times when i explain why like stoicism i say it makes you philosophical you know the lowercase the lowercase picture yeah it's like does it really matter it doesn't matter that much it all just feels like it's not that there's that much at stake but it's like you know it's all gonna work out you know or it's not or it's not but as you're the master of is when it doesn't it still does but that's what i mean like maybe early read on stoicism it's like it's all gonna work out and then the more philosophical one is like or maybe it won't and that is also working itself out you know it's like it's just you just have a bigger perspective on things maybe you've been hearing the buzz about live shopping lately i know i have and it makes sense like people 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that in my book that that's her big revelation when she realizes that like stoicism is limited it can only like help her in certain ways of her life but what about love and chaos you know those are human those are great like if i fell in love tomorrow i mean i'd be very interested because i like have not fallen in love as a stoic you know but i would hope if i fall in love i just lose my fucking mind you know what i mean and look then i pay ten times for it in the tenfold in the future of misery but still that's a human experience you know i want that so what do you think about that i mean i thought about this a lot during the the virtue series where you put it and i ended up putting it in in injustice like our affection for each other our connection to human beings our obligations to each other i told the story towards the end of right thing right now about charles the god and his wife had this daughter with down syndrome and i think i think i write about that in my book that's a big revelation the time when you like you would ship a child like that away yeah and and they don't and she's like the apple of his eye and they hold these long walks together they had this like profoundly loving relationship and the sort of philosophical beauty of that as well as the right sort of selflessness of that and the sort of connecting to something bigger than yourself of that strikes me as like what justice is ultimately justice isn't like hey i i gave you my word i'm gonna do it or you know i am scrupulously honest it's the the selflessness and the giving yourself over to things i put it there and then i would probably also put it in wisdom in the sense of like what's this all for if it's not for for love for love but see i'm talking about like madness you know which which i do think that there's value in it you know and when i write it's all within the stoic paradigm like i'm not saying madness out of like i can't put my books without madness you know like no no i need to pull the irrational exuberance of those early days of falling in love with someone and then and then you know there's a mother-daughter relationship in my book and there's when the daughter's just being a nasty little bitch and she's like enjoying her and getting frustrated by her and then they fall asleep together and they're falling so they have to sleep on an air mattress and she kind of hugs her daughter and she says the stoic makes some good points but none of them are mothers and i just think that love of a child that i've just liked to be so bedeviled and i don't want to reason myself out of the frustration and the craving of my daughter you know i think about in meditations all the time which i think goes to this and again our perspective on who the stoics were we tend to i just don't know if we fully give them credit for who they were as actual human beings which is a little bit more well-rounded this is mark saying what he learns from sexist is his kindness an example of fatherly authority in the home what it means to live as nature requires to show intuitive sympathy for friends tolerance for amateurs and sloppy thinkers his ability to get along with everyone sharing his company was the highest of compliments the opportunity blah blah blah does not to display anger or other emotions to be free of passion yet full of love right so to me he's talking about how can you be philosophical and be stoic within the frustrating aggravating beautiful crazy inexplicableness of human relationships especially family and the people you care the most about right so i think to me what stoicism is kind of like well let's get rid of the madness of anger the madness of like you know lust or jealousy or anxiety let's push those aside and then if we're going to make room for any of the passions love is the one we're going to make the exception for but then it does get into attachment in a way that i think is good you know like it's very hard to love without attachment you know and again what the stoic's right and then go but marcus you had 11 children so like clearly clearly what he's trying to do is remind himself of how attachments can be irrational or you know how we can lose things or how you don't control within the context of the default being you have a family you love your spouse blah blah blah so it's it's like people go well they say here you know ambition is bad don't have ambition and it's like yes the person saying that was an extremely ambitious person like they're not saying that because they're sitting in an ashram somewhere not doing anything or in a year-long silent meditation retreat they're saying that in the forum running for this office or that office and so it's the context with which they're saying it's not that they're hypocritical it's that they're saying hey hey just understand what ambition is if you're going to have it because you're right it's like they're playing with the fire but then also reminding themselves that it's dangerous right right that's an important lens on it yeah and that and that comes that does come from age i think a lot of it does you know or just experience it's not even just comes from experience you know we just go to the female stoke thing we did this video a couple months ago about like uh stoic women in history one of the ones we talked about was portia cato because cato's daughter okay like cato's daughter is in shakespeare's julius caesar she's married to brutus a lot of people know this okay so then there's this famous scene where to prove herself worthy of being included in the conspiracy she stabs herself in the leg and then and then binds up the woman just to see like hey could she withstand torture yeah and when she does she goes anyway so these are some of the comments i thought you'd like this okay the very essence of a woman's life is an exercise in stoicism i thought that was funny um and then someone said she stabbed herself in the thigh bound the untreated womb suffered with fever for several days and her husband didn't even notice yeah that tracks um considering what men have done to women throughout history men are very lucky that so many women are stoic yes because i think about you hear the stories about this like this stoica gladly goes into exile but it's like who's he dragging along with him or who's staying behind that's right the person who not only had to put up with it and deal with the consequences but who don't even dignify with the name yeah that's stoicism right there well i agree and i do think that being a mother that there are those at a certain age when the kid is sick and you're sick and you still have to be like the woman of the household and do those things and then you have your work and you do that you just put your head down and you do it and i do i will say no hate ryan i think women do a much better job at that than men do people are always like women are so emotional it's like actually it's we portray emotional as being like crying or afraid and then it's like a dude gets angry and he punches a wall and we're like that's so masculine it's like that was extremely emotional yeah yeah yeah and march just talks about that in meditation i was like it's not mainly to lose your temper and great things like i think about like a current political environment these are incredibly emotional uh like fragile snowflakes who are going around saying like women shouldn't be in combat roles because they're too sensitive yeah yeah it's really true and i always think that women are so much more practical than men i have that line in the book is when she talks about something that says women you can't accuse us of not being practical like i think that we are extremely and i think it scares men and when they really see how practical women are like i have my women friends and we practically like go through the problems i think it would terrify men and so i do think that that women do have a certain like they there's just this baked in stoicism to how we go through the day that we don't get credit for it's not like we're not portraits encouraged when we stay home with the kids you know a man is like you know oh my god look he's babysitting the kids tonight and you're like oh you mean he's like co-parenting exactly and so there's like that type of thing so i do i think maybe that's why women women maybe are responding to it is it's really already aligns with a lot of how they go through their days yeah there's um whichever one thought of the persians at the battle marathon he famously said um you know i would rather stand in battle three times than give birth once yes that's that's very true no i know the child birth thing is all other level it's crazy yeah yeah yeah these are the comments i thought you should uh you should respond to okay these are the last three god no maybe if they were raised to be stoked instead of following every fleeting emotion women are boring do you think catering to women is going to help your channel i'm not watching this and it says and why do women overreact so much why do they struggle so much with emotions why do they act so much on passions why do they struggle so much with discipline indulging and pleasures and being so inconsistent why do they get all over the place every month and it's like the hilariousness of i'm also thinking of like how emotional do you have to be as a person to write that comment on a video under your real name exactly exactly well i'd say that when that when there's systems that are against you you have to get your head on straight about it you know about like how are you going to react in these situations you know and so i think that that i mean women have certainly a degree of of exposure to that people of color etc etc you know and so i think that that there are a lot of people who are the system is set up against them and so i think you do have to have a plan for that you know it's like you've got to figure it out like what is my and that's where you need a philosophy of life i think because every injustice is going to make you angry make you crazy you know one of my things that that i i say during my protocols for when i'm about to get wigged out or when i am getting wigged out about something and what to do is just like don't make it worse you know it's the first rule of holes yes i have that in my book the first rule of holes man is just don't make it worse like that that is yeah that's the yeah the first rule of holes is when you find yourself at all stop digging and that's what i find that i feel like with that you do you know in specific situations but just largely you have to come up with a plan and you really do you want to be kind of steve jobs with the turtleneck you know you want to just be like that's nothing that bothers me like that's just i've made an executive decision that i will not be i won't go there i won't start getting myself worked up i won bring other people into it i won't talk about it constantly you know it's just like not going to be my problem i do think then you get to be productive you know then you get to write books and you get to do things with your time you know so i think you do have to come up with a plan well i think sometimes people go well what could the stoics teach me uh uh you know this is just a bunch of privileged white guys and it's like okay first off you have you have no conception of what the roman empire was you think they're all blonde and blue eyes because you saw movies made in the 50s but how did they're enslaved first of all it's like from spain to turkey to north africa is an enormous swath of population of different you know different skin colors and cultures and environments and and it's like yeah sure you have marcus aurelius but actually the beauty of stoicism is that you have marcus aurelius directly influenced by epictetus right so you have extreme power who's wrestling with the fact that for all his power and success and fame he's still constrained fundamentally by all the things in life he doesn't control right and then you have epictetus who who is disadvantaged discriminated against persecuted abused suffers and yet for all of his seemingly all the seemingly prescribed nature of his life and the limitations he's actually so powerful and has so much ownership of himself that marcus aurelius and also hadrian two members who are changed by his work are envious of him that's right and that's what the stoicism is big now or why it's getting big and why particularly with like the tech world or whatever my theory about that is because it it's when you have everything that should have made you happy and you're not happy right and i think that this really answers that cry of the soul as they say you know is that you're like wow i was supposed to i should have been happy by now you know like society told me what to go after and i did it you know i got the witch's broom and now i'm still unhappy you know and how the fuck did that happen to me you know and people go out of their minds about like and then you keep you keep you're on the hedonic treadmill you just want more and more it still doesn't make you happy and i think that stoicism is just like a circuit breaker in that it's like check yourself the whole the whole system is at fault like you the the messages everything was was wrong you have to switch it out or something so that's why i think right now it's really big you know maybe the roman empire as well for the not the epictetus what's remarkable about the moment in time we're in right now is that we're experiencing extreme prosperity and technology and all these wonderful things right we're freer than i've ever been before in history and yet also experiencing instability and uncertainty and difficulty and death in the form of a pandemic and wars and so and political corruption and chaos and dysfunction and so you're like oh okay it's never actually going to be normal it's never actually going to be calm you think you you can just have the good things but bad comes along with the good and we're all this is just fundamentally what everyone has been dealing with for all time and it turns out that for thousands of years people have been figuring out strategies for how to navigate it exactly there's a story john adams tells where you know there's this poor shoe cobbler in boston and he takes his shoes he doesn't always need them to be repaired but he's taking them to this guy just to be nice and you know he goes and he's like 20 you know this guy's got 10 kids and they're living in this sort of hobble and um drops off the shoes and then a couple days later he comes back to pick them up and as he walks up he can hear the guy working in there and he's whistling and singing he was like he was he was happy to a degree that epictetus could not have even imagined you know and he's like how is this possible he's going as i think epictetus and the stoic are talking about you you get so caught up with your own problems and and then you look and you're like how is that person who has it way worse than you right right smiling from ear to ear loving life grateful appreciative i must be doing something wrong and what stoicism does is it goes yeah here's all the things you're doing wrong you're focused on what's not in your control you have too many opinions you know you're not being resilient they walk you through the protocol and they help you get to where that is yes and then i think what really helps me is is that that the passions are based on faulty judgments that you basically judge something wrong and i love that and i think that to me is like totally freeing and i apply it every day like when as soon as you're anxious or you're upset about something it's like you made a false assumption about something and so go back and figure out what the false assumption is and and that actually can really help help the emotions well that's amazing i thought the book's great let's go let's go yes yes please