The Daily Stoic - Don’t Let This Crush You | Make Honesty Your Only Policy

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

This life thing: It’s wonderful. We are sentient beings. The apex predators at the top of the food chain. We have brilliant technology, incredible pleasures, as well as talents and skills that bring us joy and success.And guess what? We’re still gonna die. Each and every one of us. That’s the thing about life. As wonderful as life is, none of us get out of it alive. We were born mortal. Born fragile. We have had a terminal diagnosis since birth.--And with today's meditation on the day's Daily Journal excerpt, Ryan reminds us to move with all things in moderation by having an identifiable approach on honesty. That we don't have as much time as we think we do. That’s why we created our own additions to the rich history of memento mori, including: The memento mori medallion , memento mori signet ring And the memento mori pendant, All these were created to remind us that we must live NOW, while there is still time.⏳ You can view our entire Memento Mori Collection at dailystoic.com/mm✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ghosts aren't real. At least as a journalist, that's what I've always believed. Sure, odd things happen in my childhood bedroom. But ultimately, I shrugged it all off. That is, until a couple of years ago, when I discovered that every subsequent occupant of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable too. Including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. It just so happens that the alleged ghost haunted my childhood room might just be my wife's great-grandmother. It was murdered in the house next door by two gunshots to the face.

From Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios comes Ghost Story, a podcast about family secrets overwhelming coincidence and the things that come back to haunt us. Follow Ghost Story on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes at free right now by joining Wondry Plus. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. Tomorrow sounds like hydrogen being added to natural gas to make it more sustainable. It sounds like solar panels generating thousands of megawatts. And it sounds like carbon being captured and stored, keeping it out of our atmosphere.

We've been bridging to a sustainable energy future for more than 20 years. Because what we do today helps ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge. Life takes energy. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do.

And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it. Nobody gets out alive. This life thing, it's wonderful. We are sentient beings, the apex predators at the top of the food chain. We have brilliant technology, incredible pleasures,

as well as talents and skills that bring us joy and success. And guess what, we're still gonna die. Each and skills that bring us joy and success. And guess what? We're still going to die. Each and every one of us. That's the thing about life. As wonderful as it is, none of us get out of life alive. We were born mortal, born fragile. We've had a terminal diagnosis since birth.

This shouldn't detract from our sense of wonder or appreciation. It doesn't render everything pointless. Look at Seneca. He wrote often on the inevitability of death. He wrote. And yet, he wrote. That's the point. He published books.

He cared about each and every word in them. He wanted them to find large audiences. He celebrated his successes. Marcus Aurelius was constantly meditating on those words, Memento Mori, and still he raised his family. He sat at the head of an enormous empire, which he struggled and strove to maintain and protect. He also laughed and loved and hunted and read and went to the theater.

The fact that we will die is not sad. It's just that, a fact. We have to be aware of it. But we don't have to let it crush us. Instead, we should be freed by it. Freed to follow our talents where they lead us. But don't we, if they don't lead us to ever last in fame. Freed to fall in love and raise a family. But not to be crippled with anxiety and worry every second

about the pain of losing them. Freed to have fun. But be careful not to waste our finite amount of time doing so. None of us are going to get out of this life alive. None of us will escape the prophecy and that's okay. What we have is right now. What we have is plenty, so seize it, embrace it, live it. And of course, Momento Mori, you can check out the memento more coin than I carry in my left pocket everywhere I go at store.dailystowach.com.

Make honesty your only policy. As Emperor Marcus Aurelius did not see the best of humanity, leaders never do. At court there would have been backbiting people who sold their friends out when they saw an opportunity to advance themselves, averse, and deceit. He especially didn't like faux attempts at honesty. His point, if you have to say, I'm going to be honest with you here, what you're casually saying is that honesty is an exception for you and not the rule that you're making a special effort to tell the truth here because you usually don't.

And how sad is that? It's time to think about what these little statements say about us and how to make sure that our default policy is honesty and straight forwardness. Today's and then the two quotes we have from Marx to Relious's Meditations and then from Seneca's Moral Letters go is follows. How rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to give it to you straight. What are you up to friend? It shouldn't need to be your announcement, but be seen readily, as if written on your forehead heard in the ring of your voice, a flash in your eyes, just as the beloved sees it all in a lover's glance. In short, the straightforward and good person should be like the smelly goat. You know it when they're in the room with you. I love that

quote. That's so great. A calculated give it to you straight as like a dagger, and there's nothing worse than a wolf befriending sheep. We should avoid false friendship at all costs. If you are good, straightforward and well-meaning, it should show in your eyes and not escape notice. That's from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 1115. And then Sennaka's moral letters, 109, he says, it is in keeping with nature to show our friends' affections

and to celebrate their advancement as if it was our very own For if we don't do this For if we don't do this virtue which is strengthened only by exercising our perceptions Will no longer endure in us Look, I think this idea that honesty is your best policy is really important and Obviously we should cultivate a reputation for candor for straight forwardnessness, for not holding back, for not being too faced. If you have an opinion, you put it out there, you don't say one thing in private, another thing in public, right? But I would say, you know, and we had Randall Stuttman on the Daily Stove podcast

and in the Daily Stove leadership challenge recently. And he did push back on this trend of radical candor, that often it can be an excuse for being a jerk. The Stokes take their original roots from the cynics, Diogenies who walks the streets of Athens just saying whatever he thinks. But I don't particularly admire him. I see him as sort of anti-social. So I think what Marcus is saying, cultivated reputation for straightforwardness, this is in context of the other Stoeb virtues.

It takes courage to be clear and to voice unpopular opinions and to say what people don't want to hear. But it also takes moderation and an understanding of justice to know what opinions to voice, how to voice them, how not to be a jerk about them. You know, radical candor in Wall Street firms, Randall was saying, is, again, often excused for asshole bosses to be more of a jerk. And that's not the excuse they need. We want to be both straightforward, as well as restrained, and I know that seems a little

contradictory, but, well, life is complicated, and it's about balance. So when we say we want to be the smelly goat in the room, I don't think we want, and someone who owns goats. Let me tell you, man, goats can stink. I can sometimes smell my neighbor's goats. He's like a half mile away. I'll catch a whiff of it in the wind. A male goat, this sort of musk they have, man, it is repulsive. It's disgusting. I don't think that's what Marcus is saying. I think he's being a bit exaggerated.

He's just saying that, you know, these, I'm going to be level with you here or when we say, I don't mean any offense or no offense intended, you really did mean. You can almost expect that the next words out of this person's mouth are going to be really poorly thought out, not so nice things. And so I think we should take some time here to think about this balance. This is what temperance is really about, right? Just in the way that courage is a midpoint between cowardice and recklessness. I'd like to think that honesty is a line somewhere between omission, not saying things and saying too many things or something like to that regard. If you get what I'm saying, it's that, yes, we have to tell the truth, but you don't have to tell someone

that you find them repulsive today. You don't have to tell them that you really hate the sound of their voice, right? There are things you can keep yourself. And I guess I just wanted to add a little color to this week's meditation that being a stoic and there was an interesting lawsuit recently, a workplace lawsuit, where a man

claimed that stoicism was his religion, and therefore the offensive things he said at work, the way he comported himself and behaved even some of his hygiene habits, he could not be fired for them because they were his religious beliefs. But when you really look at the remarks that he was defending the way that he's behaving, it's true that he's actually just a jerk. And that's not what we're talking about. So all things in moderation, including this kind of honesty that we're talking about from Marcus Relius,

have an identifiable scent that you are an honest person that don't be a stinky goat. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a wind farm powering homes across the country. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge, life takes energy. to a sustainable energy future.

Working today to ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge, life takes energy.