The Daily Stoic - This Ain’t No Sin
Episode Date: July 31, 2024It doesn’t matter that times are dark or violent or uncertain. We must be grateful, we must seize this gift we’ve been given while we have it. 🪙 Designed with the intention of car...rying them in your pocket, our Memento Mori Medallion is a literal and inescapable reminder that “you could leave life right now.”Check it out at https://store.dailystoic.com/✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to The Daily Stoic early and ad free right now.
Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcast. and wisdom, everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy
that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us
dailystow.com.
This ain't no sin. It was a dark time, to be sure, a violent time, an uncertain time.
Rome, be it in Cato or Marcus Aurelius' time, to say nothing of Seneca or Epictetus' living
under Nero or slavery, respectively, this was no picnic.
And yes, the Stokes tried to be indifferent, unfazed by it all.
They tried to focus on what was in their control.
They tried not to be too attached to the things that could be taken from them, which as it happens was basically everything down
to their very life.
As I talk about in Lives of the Stoics,
a very sizable percentage of the Stoics
departed this earth by order of an executioner.
Yet that didn't mean that the Stoics
could not be happy people.
It didn't mean that they weren't able to enjoy
bright, fresh mornings
or long meandering dinners with friends. As Springsteen sings on Badlands,
it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive. Even the strictest of stoics would have agreed that it was
woefully insufficient to simply describe life as a preferred indifferent. Life was a wonderful gift,
one that they were grateful to have, one that they sought to make the most of while they had it.
And so must we.
It doesn't matter that times are dark or violent or uncertain.
It doesn't matter that our knowledge of human nature and biology makes it impossible for
us to be naive about the world.
Still, we must be grateful.
We must seize this gift that we have been given while we have it.
We should be glad that we are alive, glad that at least for the moment being alive
is far superior to any and all of the alternatives,
glad because we realize how many dead or dying people
would do anything to trade places with us.
And that's what I mean to say.
Obviously I have this memento mori coin.
We talk about the practice of memento mori
here at Daily Stoke all the time,
but I don't want that to be mistaken
with some sort of rejection of the gift of life itself.
And so that's today's message.
I'll talk to you all soon.
["The Daily Stoic"]
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