The Daily Stoic - Do You Have A Heart for Any Fate? | Don’t Look For The Third Thing

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

“Yesterday is done, so there’s no worry there. But today? What will it bring? No one can say. Certainly no one can honestly promise you that it will be easy. Would you even listen to them if they did?”Ryan explains why you must love everything that happens to you, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus Markis, Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wendery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you have a heart for any fate? Yesterday is done, so there's no worry there. But today, tomorrow, what will it bring? No one can say. Certainly, no one can honestly promise you that it will be easy.

And would you even listen to them if they did? After a year that's brought a pandemic, a recession and impeachment, hurricanes and floods and fires and murder hornets and so much else, the Stoics would say that there is no hope of taking the teeth out of this world. All we can do is toughen ourselves up. All we can do is be prepared. All we can do is our best. Let us then be up and doing, long fellow, wrote, with a heart for any fate, still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.

This, this is the still of prescription. Santaca said that fortune behaves as she pleases. Marcus Aurelia said that they will come at us with knives and jeers, but whatever, we come at us with knives and jeers. But whatever, we will face it boldly and bravely. We will be ready for anything. We will labor. We will wait months in quarantine if we have to. We will keep achieving. We will be up and doing. We will never stop pursuing. Because the world cannot break us. The world cannot deter us. It can alter our places. Sure, it can knock us down,

but we can get back up. We can be stronger in the broken places. We will keep being good, no matter what other people say and do. We will greet it all with a smile. We'll love every second of it. Don't look for the third thing. The Stoics teaches that doing well is its own reward, to do the right thing, to see someone helped by it. This is enough, to go around expecting thanks. What Marcus Aurelis describes is the third thing. That is to miss the point. It's being greedy. Keeping score not only misses the purposes of being good, it's foolish. It sets you up for disappointment. If you're going to do some accounting, look at it from the other direction. How many people have helped us? What do we owe them in return?

Think about clearing some debts this week and consider forgetting any notion of others owing you. This is from this week's Entry in the Daily Stoke, journal 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living, together by myself, and the wonderful Steve Hanselman. You can buy this anywhere, books are sold. I sell a bunch of signed copies, personalized it, usually write, prepare and reflect in the Daily Stoke Store. You can buy that at store.dailystoke.com.

Then we've got two quotes from Marcus to think about today. One person on doing well by others immediately accounts the expected favor in return. Another is not so quick, but still considers the person a debtor and knows the favor. A third kind of person acts as if not conscious of the deed, rather like a vine producing a cluster of grapes without making further demands, like a horse after its race or a dog after its walk or a bee after

making its honey. Such a person having done a good deed won't go shouting from rooftops, but simply moves on to the next deed, just like the vine produces another bunch of grapes in the right season. It's Marcus Relius' Meditations 5'6. That's such a beautiful image. Plants produce fruit. They don't even reap the benefits of that fruit. They just do it because that's their nature. That's their job.

And then we have one more. When you've done well and another has benefited by it, why like a fool do you look for the third thing on top, credit for the good deed or favor in return? That's Marcus Realis' Med in return. That's meditation. That's Marcus realizes meditation's seven, seven, three. Anytime Marcus is repeating himself in meditation, I think it's illustrative. And I think he is doing what we all do, right? He did something good. And he was disappointed that it either wasn't recognized or he was frustrated that it was actually interpreted

incorrectly or maybe he saw, like imagine your marks to realize you're trying not to be corrected by power, you've seen what your horrible predecessors have done and you're being attacked for it. You know, he says that to be a good king, he said that the rewards of being a leader is to do good things and earn a bad reputation You still get attacked and then not only that you see as we're seeing now politically right you see one side attempting to be bipartisan and the other side Not being bipartisan and in fact taking advantage of even the impulse to be bipartisan. Right? So, there's a, if you're going through life looking for this third thing, and I do this all the time myself, if you're going through life looking for that third thing, you're going to be disappointed all the time. And you're going to question why you were doing

the good thing, because if you're doing it in this quid pro quo, one hand washes the other, you do a thing, they do a thing, you start to go, this is a, this is a suckers payoff. Like I'm doing the right thing and I'm not getting anything for it, I'm going to stop doing the right thing. No, the stokes want you to think, no, the right thing is your job. You do the right thing because it produces pleasure for you. You do the right thing because that's what you were put here on this planet to do. You do the right thing because it's the right thing.

Everything else is extra. I've talked about this a bunch of times, but it's just sort of like a top of my an example because I was just doing it this morning. We pick up trash on this walk that we go on in the mornings. And I remember we, there was so much trash, I think I was telling you this, there's so much trash the other day that we had to get the ATV out and go out and pick it. We pick up this huge trash bag full of trash. And the next morning I go for a walk and you know, I somewhat expect people to throw

some trash out of their car on the next day or whatever. It's actually worse than that. Someone threw a fucking dead dog on the side of my road, right? So I can get upset by this, I can get disgusted by this, or I can just deal with it, right? I say, my job is I have given myself this job of keeping this thing clean,

because it gives me pleasure. Knowing I took this trash out of the environment. It's not clogging up river streams, it's not getting any animals, bellies. I'm doing that because I think it's the right thing to do. I don't want to be thanked, I don't want credit for it. I don't need everyone to follow suit. I'm just going to do it. But I have to remind myself, again, no one's on the same page as you. There's still gonna be some crazy person discarding dead animal car.

I don't even wanna know why this is happening. It's insane. It's actually been a thing that's happened like since I've lived out in the country. I don't know if people, they can't be hitting them with their cars because like, I mean, you just leave it there. I don't know if there's a dog fighting ring out here or if it's a cultural thing, I don't, I don't, it's crazy. And so I just, I had, I called a different neighbor and

I said, Hey, can you get your tractor, scoop this thing up, dispose of it, and we'll move on, go about our days, and try to keep doing the right thing, and not let the bastards bring us down. Don't look for the third thing, do the right thing because it's the right thing. That's this week's lesson. And as we said in the little meditations, forgive the debts that others owe you

and be very diligent about paying your debts to all the people who have selflessly done good things for you in this world over the years. You know, it's easy to talk about this idea of a Morphati, but, you know, obviously the last year and a half or so has been an immense challenge in that regard, but I have tried to wake up every day and say to myself, whatever it is, I'm an embrace it, I have tried to wake up every day and say to myself whatever it is

I'm an embrace and I'm gonna make the most of it a more faulty not merely to love what is necessary as Nietzsche said But love it. That's what a more faulty is. I made this cool challenge going with Robert Green It's got an image of a fire on the front because as Marcus really says what you throw in front of a fire is fuel for the fire That's what a more faulty is about can check that out in the daily stoke store There's a cool pendant version as well store.dailystoic.com Hey prime members you can listen to the dailyoic early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.