The Daily Stoic - Enjoy It While You Have It, Don’t Miss It When You Don’t | Washing Away the Dust of Life

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

“The thing about most things we label as “bad” is that they aren’t. They just are. A virus isn’t evil. An economic depression isn’t malicious. They are unfeeling, indifferent, inhuman events. Their impact on humans, unfortunately, is not quite so neutral, but the fact remains: They are things that just are.”Ryan explains how a Stoic views external events, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy For Your Actual Life is a 14 day course designed to teach you what you do not yet know. It includes 14 custom emails delivered daily (over 20,000 words of all-new content, 5 live video sessions with bestselling author Ryan Holiday, printable 14 Day Calendar With custom daily illustrations to track progress, a group Slack channel for accountability and community sharing, and more! Sign ups are open now but close on Sunday, May 2 at 11:59 PM CST. The course will begin on May 3. Sign up now at dailystoic.com/101This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. It tastes great and gets you the nutrients you need, whether you're working on the go, fueling an active lifestyle, or just maintaining your good health. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. ***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See 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 Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoke, 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 Epipetus 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. Enjoy it while you have it. Don't miss it when you don't. Do you know the fable of the Fox without a tale? It's one of Asop's best. In the story of Fox escapes a trap by chewing off its tail. The Fox struggles to come to terms with his terrible loss, almost wishing he was dead, than to be without his beautiful tail.

Finally, he tries to convince the other foxes that life is actually better without it. You were less likely to get caught by a hound or a stuck in a trap, he said, and hunters would have nothing to cut off, and on and on. But one crafty fox saw the trick for what it was and said, and hunters would have nothing to cut off and on and on. But one crafty fox saw the trick for what it was and said, you're only saying that because you've lost your tail that ever happens to us. We'd be wise to do the same, but in the meantime, we're going to enjoy what we have. Asop lived many, many years ago, and it's possible that the moral of his fable made his way to the Stoics.

And it certainly seems like it did, because while the primary message of the story is about being careful to whom you listen to, coming to terms with loss is also a big part of it. Seneca, in his ninth letter to Lucilius, speaks quite eloquently about the kind of self-sufficiency Aesthetic Muscultivate. If he loses a hand through disease or war,ica rights of the philosopher or if some accident puts out one or both of his eyes, he will be satisfied with what is left, taking as much pleasure in his impaired and maimed body as he took when it was sound. This is partly what the fox and some of the cynics missed. It's not that your tale or money or an

impressive title are to be scorned. They should be enjoyed while you have them. fox and some of the cynics missed. It's not that your tail or money or an impressive title are to be scorned. They should be enjoyed while you have them. It's that we have to understand that possessing is a fleeting thing, that it can all disappear in an instant. We can prefer to have things while we have them, but the second we lose them, we just move on. We don't need to fault others whose good fortune remains. We don't need to exaggerate or dilute ourselves about our lost. We just adjust. We accept the new normal. We move on because it's all we can do. Washington away the dust of life. Watch the stars in their courses and imagine yourself running alongside them. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life.

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 747. It's almost impossible to stare up at the stars and not feel something, as the cosmologist Neil de Grasthyson has explained the cosmos fills us with complicated emotions. On the one hand, we feel an infinitesimal smallness and comparison to the vast universe, on the other an extreme connectedness to this larger whole. Obviously given that we're in our own bodies every day, it's tempting to think that this is the most important thing in the world. But we counteract our bias by looking at nature, and things much bigger than us. Aligned from Seneca, which has since become a proverb, expresses Marcus's insight well.

The world itself is a huge temple of all the gods. Looking at the beautiful expanse of the sky is an antidote to the nagging pettiness of earthly concerns, and it is good and sobering to lose yourself in this as often as you can. And this is from the April 29th entry of the Daily Stoic, which I hope you check out. I had a moment where this idea of washing off the dust of earthly life and meditating on something bigger and older than yourself, it really hit me. I was in Budapest.

I've told the story before, but I was in Budapest and I went to this Turkish bathhouse that had been there since the 1600s. I was giving a talk and I snuck there to do this before I talk to them. Sitting in this cavernous tile room in this hot water, bubbling up from miles beneath the earth. And from my reading, it struck me that Marcus Aurelius had sat not far from where I was sitting at the Roman baths at a quinkum and experienced the exact same feelings. We were both washing off the dust of earthly life, literally.

But in that way, we were both sort of running alongside the stars, both connected to something very distant, very old, very timeless, very, very human. And this goes to what Neil de Grasse Tyson was talking about. When you consider the expansive history in the sky, you feel both small and big, because it's huge compared to you, but then you're also a part of it, and that makes you big.

And I think these experiences where we meditate on the immensity, where we seek out history and we try to touch something that goes back further than ourselves. We try to root ourselves in that tradition, that series of torches being passed from one person to another is humbling and inspiring and deeply important. And you just see it appear time and time again in the stoke writings. And I think that's why it's important. And you go as the enemy, I quote this passage, I'm talking about John Muir and his first trip to Alaska, and he's exploring Glacier Bay, and he writes, we feel the life and motion about us. The universal beauty, the tides marching back and forth

with weiriless industry, leaving the beautiful shores and swaying the purple dulce of the broad meadows of the sea where the fishes are fed and the wild streams and rows white with waterfalls ever and bloom and ever in song, spreading their branches over a thousand mountains. The vast forest is feeding on the drenching sunbeams every cell in a world of enjoyment, misty flocks of insects,

stirring all the air, the wild sheep, and the goats on the grassy ridges above the woods, the bears in the berry tangles, minke and beaver, an otter far back on many a river and lake, Indians and adventurers pursuing their lonely ways, birds tending to their young everywhere beauty and life, and glad rejoice in action. Pierre Hadoel, one of the great translators of Marcus Aurelius and the writer of the Intercidadel, talks about the oceanic feeling, a sense of belonging to something larger, of realizing, as he says, all human beings are an infinitesimal point in the immensity.

And I think it's in those moments that we're not only free, but drawn towards really important questions, who am I? What am I doing? What is my role in the world? I hope you seek out some moments like that today. I hope you seek them out actively. It's a deep part of the stoic philosophy. You deserve it and you'll be better for it.

Our newest course, Daily Stoics, Stoicism 101, Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life. You can sign up now, just go to dailystoic.com slash 101. You're gonna be able to benefit from my synthesis of all this information over the years. This is gonna be a live course. All the participants will join the course together and move through together at the same time.

Registration is now officially open. It will close on Sunday, May 2nd, at 11.59 pm, CST. And the course will begin on that our normal clerk. Well, this is different than our normal courses, but I'd really love to have you join us. Check it out. We think it's going to be one of our best. I hope to have you join me. Just go to dailystoic.com slash 101. That's dailystoic.com slash 101. Or just click the link in the show notes, and I'm excited to talk to you soon. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery

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