The Daily Stoic - There Is Always Both | Marks Of The Good Life

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

It was an awful period of Roman history. A fifteen year plague that killed millions. Political corruption and deceit. Historic floods. Tragic wars on distant frontiers. Marcus Aurelius experienced all the disasters that could befall a leader, smack dab in the middle of a period we now see as the beginning of the decline and fall of the whole empire.-And in today's excerpt from The Daily Stoic, Ryan reminds us to let our princeples be the source of desire and action, removing any source of evil, and creating your own meaning of life though jusice, self-control, courage & freedom.✉️ 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.

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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, and the Heart of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, it will give you a quick meditation from the Stokes with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works. There is always both. It was an awful period of Roman history, a 15-year plague that killed millions, political corruption and deceit, historic floods, tragic wars on distant frontiers.

Marcus really experienced all the disasters that could befall a leader, smack dab in the middle of a period we now see as the beginning of the decline and fall of the whole empire. Yet, amidst this, Marcus was not only as good and decent as a leader, as a leader could be, but he produced meditations, one of the most beautiful and enduring works of philosophy ever written. You can actually check out,

we have a really cool leather edition of this, by the way. It calls to mind a quote that the author, Eric Larson, built his most recent Churchill World War II book around a must read also. You can pick it up at the painted porch. quote that the author, Eric Larson, built his most recent Churchill World War II book around. A must read also. You can pick it up with the painted porch. Never was there such a contrast. Larson quotes John Colville of saying, such a contrast of natural splendor and human vileness. So it was for the modern world recently. There's been a deadly pandemic and attempted coup and all sorts of other awfulness. There were also heroic doctors pioneering scientists who saved millions of lives.

There was beautiful art inside splittingly funny comedy. In your own home amidst the ugliness around you, there may have been new babies born, new businesses started, new relationships blossoming, positive new habits begun. We don't control the vileness of the world or of other people. We do control whether we contribute to it, whether we choose to contrast it with our own splendor and goodness. We control what we look for also as Marcus did, filling meditation is not just with somber or depressing notes but also observations about the beauty and majesty of nature and life. Will you be

splendid or vile? That's the call you get to make always and forever. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to today's entry from the Daily Stoic. Today's October 20th, marks of the Good Life. You have proof in the extent of your wanderings that you never found the art of living anywhere, not in logic, not in wealth, or fame, or any indulgence. No where. Where is it then? In doing what human nature demands, how is a person to do this?

By having principles be the source of desire and action. What principles? Those to do with good and evil, indeed, in the belief that there is no good for a human being except what creates justice, self-control, courage, freedom, and nothing evil except that which destroys these things. Marcus Areleus' meditations, eight, one. Then the entry reads, what is the meaning of life? Why was I born? Most of us struggle with these questions. Sometimes when we're young, sometimes not until we're older. Rarely do we find much in the way of directions, but that's simply because we miss the point. As Victor Frankel points out in man search for meaning, it's not our question to ask.

Instead, it is we who are being asked the question. It's our lies that are the answer. No amount of traveling or reading or cleverages can tell you what you want to know. Instead, it is you who must find the answer in your actions and living the good life by embodying the self-evident principles of justice, self-control, courage, and freedom and abstaining from evil. There's probably nothing that Marcus talks about in meditation more than the virtues. Deeply earnest about them too. I think cynicism is

this kind of idea that nothing matters, but there's a self-fulfilling prophecy to that. Conversely, when you take the virtues as important and as significant, and you try to live by them, and you follow them, and you try to live up to them, I think you create meaning, as Victor Franco was saying. You know, the decision to say, hey, this is who I am. This is what's important to me. This is what I think I was put here to do. This is what I know I'm capable of being. That elevates us, right?

That's why I've been writing this series in the Forvert Jews, just to encourage self-discipline, the temperance version just came out. Discipline is destiny, the power of self-control, which you can grab anywhere books are sold, and thank you to everyone who supported the book. Now I'm tackling justice in my writings. And yeah, you just read about people who experienced so much adversity, so much difficulty, so much pain,

who never gave up, who never quit, who never said, ah, nothing matters, never said fuck it, who stuck with that sense of decency and goodness because they felt like there was meaning in that. To me, that's what stoicism is all about. That's the journey that we're on. That's the journey that I'm trying to be on in this series. That's why I try to talk about here at Daily Still at Clayton.

I don't know what put us here, right? I'll leave that question to a much wiser person. But I know that we are here. And so how do we make that meaningful? It's not by doing whatever we want. It's not by chasing our pleasure. It's not by avoiding pain or risk. It's by standing up, stepping forward, doing what we can, trying to leave this place

a little bit better than we found it. So I try to do my writing, so I try to talk about here. That's what I know so many of you try to do. And whatever it is that you do professionally, it's what I try to do as a parent, it's what I try to do as a spouse. Marcus says that life is what our thoughts make it, and deciding to think that virtue is important is important. You could argue it's the most important thing. And this idea of the good life, right, Cardo's, which is where the phrase cardinal virtues

comes from, it says that it's about hint, that means hinge, or pivot point. I think, put aside the marks of good life, the good life pivots on this, pivots on virtue, pivots on those four key ideas that Marcus was talking about. And I hope you're hanging your life, I hope you're hanging your hat, your life, your sense of meaning and value as a person on those four things too. And I hope it served you as it served me. I appreciate all the support of the new book everyone. It's been awesome to see how it's doing.

And I've loved hearing from all of you. If you haven't read Discipline, it's destiny. You can grab that anywhere, books or sold. You can listen to it in an audio too. But what I'd really prefer is that you just do your best today to live by those ideas. 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 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.

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.