Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, into the real world. These are things you cannot buy. It doesn't matter how much you have, it doesn't matter how much you make, it doesn't matter how powerful you are. When it comes to time, when it comes to health, when it comes to the reality of existence, all of us are poor and weak. As the great song, A Satisfied Mind, goes, My money can't buy, can't buy that. Your youth, when you're old, youth.
Nobody knew this better than Marcus Aurelius. He was rich. He ruled over a vast empire. Armies stood at his beck and call. And yet so much of his life was outside of his control. He was as defenseless as the rest of us when it came to old age. He was as defenseless as many of us when it came to his poor health, when it came to betrayal, as he was by Avidius Cassius and possibly his wife, and when it came to so many human problems.
We fantasize that our success will save us from these inconveniences and worries. And it's true that money can insulate a little bit, can make some things go away, but it will never do for us the things that only philosophy, only wisdom can solve, that only endurance and fortitude can get us through.