The Daily Stoic - Pain Is A Part Of Life | Become An Expert In What Matters

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

This is an excerpt from Ryan Holiday’s latest book **The Daily Dad.**“Even though you have these powers free and entirely your own, you don’t use them, because you still don’t realize what you have or where it came from. . . . I am prepared to show you that you have resources and a character naturally strong and resilient.”-EpictetusOh, how you wish you could guarantee they will never suffer. Of course, you know that’s not possible. As the character in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha says, we cannot spare our kids the suffering we have gone through in our lives. We cannot prevent them from suffering at all. Because suffering and pain are parts of life.---And in today's Daily Stoic excerpt reading, Ryan examines why the danger in becoming "an expert in trivia" is that it results in understanding everything but oneself.📗 Preorder your signed and numbered first edition of The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kid before its May 2 release.✉️ 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stove podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. The Dell Technologies Black Friday in July event is on with limited quantity deals on top business PCs with Windows 11 Pro. Save on select Vostro laptops with built-in OS recovery fingerprint readers and antivirus protections. Plus you can save on select latitude laptops with a wide range of built-in privacy collaboration and connectivity features. Enjoy unmatched productivity and connectivity with

incredible savings on our best tech. Get free shipping and special financing with Dell Business Credit. Dell Technologies recommends Windows 11 Pro for business. Find the right tech for your needs by calling a Dell Technologies Advisor at 877-Ask-Dell. That's 877-Ask-Dell, offered to business customers by WebBank, who determines qualifications for in terms of credit. 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 Heart of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and a

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. Pain is a part of life. Oh, how you wish you could guarantee that they would never suffer. Of course, you know that's not possible. As the character in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha says, we cannot spare our kids the suffering we

have gone through in our lives. We cannot prevent them from suffering altogether because suffering and pain are a part of life. As a parent, the goal is to raise kids who are tough enough, loved enough, to deal with what life is going to throw at them. We don't want them to suffer, but when the suffering comes in, it's definitely coming. We want them to be able to endure the initial shock, navigate its ups and downs, and then learn from the consequences. Think about that today.

Think about toughening your kids up. Think about preparing them for an uncertain future, because that is the one thing we know for certain. Things are going to be tough. Things will go wrong. More pandemics and emergencies and recessions in heartbreak lie ahead. Our kids are going to have to be ready for it, and it's on us to make sure that they are. that they are. Becoming an expert in what matters. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoke April 14th. Believe me, Sena Kurses in on the shortness of life, it's better to produce the balance

sheet of your own life than that of the grain market. The things that people manage to become experts in, fantasy sports, celebrity trivia, derivatives, and commodities markets, 13th century hygiene habits, the clergy. We can get very good at what we're paid to do, or adapt at a hobby we wish we could be paid to do. And yet our own lives, habits and tendencies might be a complete mystery to us. Santa Cah was writing this important reminder to his father-in-law who, as it happened, was for a time in charge of Rome's grainery.

But then his position was revoked for political purposes. Who really cares, Santa Cah was saying? Now you can focus that energy on your inner life. At the end of your time on this planet, what expertise is going to be more valuable? Your understanding of matters of living and dying or your knowledge of the 87 bears. What will help your children more,

your insights into happiness and meaning or that you followed breaking political news every day for 30 years? I've said this before, but obviously being an informed citizen in a democracy is really important. But people seem to think that being an informed citizen means watching a lot of MSNBC or Fox News or spending a lot of time on Twitter. But what you see with these folks is they know a lot of trivia, but they fundamentally don't understand human nature.

They fundamentally don't understand right or wrong or virtue or the things that actually matter in life. I think it was Herocletus who said something like this. He says, you know, these people study all these books for all these years and they failed to realize that day and night are one. What I take from that is he's saying, is that they're missing the big picture. They're missing the eternal deep truths of life in exchange for the trivia. You know, they run a great business. They understand these events in fiction or art or sports or whatever it is, but they've fundamentally not come to grasp the truth of existence.

And I think even what I love about stoicism is that stoicism isn't big arcane abstract questions, but practical ones. It's about understanding the balance sheet of one's life as Senuka was ones. It's about understanding the balance sheet of one's life as Sena Ko was saying. It's about understanding theirself, understanding their emotions, understanding people. Like I've said this a bunch of times now, but like, you know, you could follow breaking pandemic news or you could read a book about the Spanish flu,

which I've recommended a bunch of times. If you haven't read a great influenza yet, you should, it's incredible. You could have followed one of Donald Trump's impeachments, or you could have read a biography of Nixon, or Andrew Johnson. It's better to go back further. It's better to look deeper.

You may even learn more from something fictional than you at like you could learn as much from Camus the plague as you could from you know the latest New York Times report. So I think what Sennaka is saying is that we often understand everything but ourselves. We ask all the little questions instead of the couple big questions, like, why am I here? What's important to me? What's right? What's wrong? And that's such a shame. Philosophy is supposed to be practical. Philosophy is supposed to push us to understand ourselves and humans, right? Like the amount of people that focus on this or that, and then just fundamentally don't understand

how psychology works, or fundamentally understand how like the very system of government works, you know, people who are, you know, now to, talking about what's going on in Ukraine and going, oh, let's put a no-fly zone over it. And then you're like, well, what is a no fly zone? Or they go, I'm mad about critical race theory. Well, what is critical race theory?

They don't know. They're just tied up and stuff, right? And they haven't thought about what the thing they're talking about would actually mean. So we talked about this before about how certainty and arrogance is the root of real ignorance. I also think it goes for what are you going to choose to know about trivial, ephemeral things, or going to probe the deeper questions, or you're going to probe yourself, or you're

going to look inward. Marcus really says, throw away your books. He says this in meditations. I don't think that meant, you know, then go watch the gladiatorial games. I think he meant, throw away your books and sit there and think, sit there and get in touch with yourself, sit there and really examine, think about the things you've already learned. That's what we're talking about.

And it's just another sort of deeply powerful, powerful question from Senica as the Stoics tell us always come an expert in the things that matter, focus on the things that matter, ask the questions that really matter, lead the trivia and nonsense to everyone else. 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 Plus in Apple podcasts. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable.

I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week week will share a parenting story that'll have you laughing nodding and thinking oh yeah I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong What would we do differently and the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night You'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world Listen to I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.

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