The Daily Stoic - Look Through The Window | Finding The Right Mentors

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

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Wondery Plus. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

Look through the window. It's obnoxious, the way they lie and cheat and meddle, the way they condescend and argue. They get in our way, they pick fights, they do all sorts of things that we hate. Marcus Aurelius writes about this very thing, not just in the opening of book two of Meditations, but throughout the book. And yet for all that, for all the frustrations

that people caused him, both as an ordinary guy and as the emperor, he tried to be patient and understanding. In her wonderful book, Good Inside, yes, we love it and I know I've been raving about it, but if you haven't bought it yet, you should, Dr. Becky Kennedy writes that on the surface we see a behavior, but underneath we see a person. And that's actually the second part of that passage in Meditations. Marcus Aurelius is writing about how he recognizes that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own.

They're a relative, he says, and he does not want to turn his back on them. Talking about children, but also unfortunately adults, sometimes Dr. Becky explains that the tantrum or the throne punch or the big mistake is not the main event. It is a window into the main event, she writes. Behavior in all its forms is a window into the feelings, the thoughts, urges, sensations, perceptions, and unmet needs of a person. Behavior is never the feelings, the thoughts, urges, sensations, perceptions, and unmet needs of a person.

Behavior is never the story, but rather it is a clue to the bigger story begging to be addressed. And we can see that this was Marcus Aurelius' approach too. He tried to understand why people did what they did, even when they heard him. He tried to understand that people were going through stuff. Tried to remind himself that even if folks get away with it, they're usually paying for it in other ways. But the most important thing he took from this window from looking at other people's

behavior and motivations, he said, was that it reminded him to start by looking at his own. And so it goes for us. And seriously, if you haven't read Dr. Becky's books, you should carry it to the painted porch. And if you haven't listened to our episode with her on the podcast, it's amazing. It was great. My only regret is that we didn't get to do it in person and go longer, but you

should listen to that and I'll link to it in today's notes. Finding the right mentors. This is the June 7th entry in the Daily Stoic. I'm holding a hardcover here in my hands. We've got a cool leather edition in the Daily Stoic store, which you can check out. But today's entry is a quote from Seneca on his essay on the Shortness of Life,

which is one of my all-time favorite quotes from Seneca. He says, we like to say that we don't get to choose our parents that they were given to us by chance, yet we can truly choose whose children we would like to be. I just love that quote so much, because to me, that's what I've done in my life. I've picked who my ancestors are, who my parents are. I'll get into more of that in a minute. Let me give you the meditation today. We are fortunate enough that some of the greatest men and women in history have recorded their

wisdom and folly in books and journals. Many others have had their lives chronicled by careful biographers, from Plutarch to Boswell to Robert Caro. The literature available at your average library amounts to millions of pages and thousands of years of knowledge, insight, and experience. Maybe your parents were poor role models or you lacked a great mentor. Yet if we choose to, we can easily access the wisdom of those who came before us, those whom we aspire to be like. We not only owe it to ourselves to seek out this hard-won knowledge,

we owe it to the people who took the time to record their experiences to try to carry on the traditions and follow their examples to be the promising children of these noble parents. Right, we all have positive ancestors and negative ancestors. We have who from our family line we're gonna choose.

I think we have a story about this in The Daily Dad. I noticed it when I was researching Florence Nightingale for Courage is Calling. Her parents were sort of these spoiled, sensitive, rich people who didn't really do anything. So it might seem out of step or the apple falling far from the tree that Florence Nightingale became this powerhouse

in nursing, does all this charitable work. But actually when you look at her grandfather and great grandfather and many other relatives, it's actually, it was her parents who were not the norm. It was a family of giving and service, actually courage and all these other wonderful traits. And so we all have that in our family. We get to choose.

I'm just reading this biography of Ben Franklin right now. And Ben Franklin has this incredible experience where he just never felt like his father's son. He was so different than his dad. And then he goes to England and he visits like his father's son. He was so different than his dad. And then he goes to England and he visits where his family is from. And he learns that his uncle died on the very day that Franklin was born, separated by a couple of years,

but they shared, it was like four years. But his family saw how similar Franklin was to his late uncle. And they came to think that he was the reincarnation of that spirit. The idea being like, we get to choose whose spirit we're gonna carry. You're not actually related to Seneca.

You're not actually related to Marcus Aurelius or any of your heroes probably, right? Not all of us come from really impressive families. Maybe everyone we're related to is normal. Maybe everyone we are related to is meh, but we can choose whose children we would like to be. We could be the descendants of the Stoics. We can walk in the tradition,

the footsteps of these great people. Martin Luther King has no relationship to Gandhi, but he is in a way Gandhi's protege, the culmination of what Gandhi pioneered. And we can be that. We can choose whose children we're gonna be and that's what Seneca is saying. And in fact, Seneca's brother embodies this.

In Roman times, it was very common for adults to be adopted by other adults if a family didn't have an heir. This is Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus and Hadrian. Marcus is very similar to Antoninus, not like Hadrian at all. He chooses to embrace the stepfather-ness, right? And Seneca's brother is in the Bible as Gaius. He changes his name

when he's adopted by this family and he was a great man. So the idea, who are we going to choose to be descended from? Whose example are we going to follow? Whose blood are we going to have running through our veins? Not literally, but figuratively, because that's what matters. And it matters what we do with it, it matters if we live up to that example, it matters if we make them proud, not whether they actually know we exist or not, not whether they anoint us, they're legal heirs,

what matters is if we act as if, and that's what today's entry is about. Be well, everyone. Right Thing Right Now is out in just a couple days. Mean a lot if you could support the book, dailystoic.com slash justice, bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses. And I appreciate your support in Daily Stoic

and the Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on wondery.com slash survey. Once upon a beat. Remember those stories and fables that would capture your imagination and you couldn't wait to see how they would unfold? And now when you read them as an adult you think some of these old tales could use a fresh spin. We have a perfect podcast to bring you the stories you remember, remix and reimagine for the kids in your life today.

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