The Daily Stoic - This Is Worse Than Death | The Philosopher’s School Is A Hospital

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

Ryan explains why the Stoics have always given their lives for what they believe in, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in 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 Epititus Markis, really a 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. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars.

And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion-forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is worse than death. There are things we fear that we should and there are the things that we should fear, but don't. Most people fear dying.

Most people don't fear, don't care that they are living a kind of death. A grippinus, one of the great stoics of Nero's time refused to compromise his beliefs or keep a low profile even though it put him in danger of running a foul of that tyrant. He wanted to be the purple thread as we've talked about even if it was safer to be black or white or gray. He would have liked the lyrics to that great Allison Chan song, the one that goes, if I can't be my own, I'd feel better dead. Indeed, he eventually died for it as his incorruptible father had before him. There are things in this life worse than death, living a bankrupt cowardly life as one of them, being a patsy or a stool, a Vici enabler, or a faceless member of the mob, is one of them. You have to repeat that in your head again and again.

You have to fight. You have to fight. You don't want to be like that faceless, nameless person that Seneca mentions was dealt a withering retort. You're pleading for your life, but how is the way that you're living any different than being dead? If you can't be your own, if you refuse to be your own, what is the point? The question is rhetorical. You can be your own, so refuse to be your own what is the point? The question is rhetorical you can be your own so choose to be and don't compromise or appease with those who want to bully you into anything different. And if you want to know more about Agrippinus I think is one of the most fascinating Stoics there are. We profile him in the new book, Lives of the Stoics, the Art

of Living from Xeno to Mark's Realise, which is out now. People are loving it. Check it out. Anywhere, books are sold. The Philosopher's School is a Hospital. Men, the Philosopher's Lecture Hall is a Hospital. You shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure but pain for you aren't well when you enter it. That's from

EpicTidus' Discourses and today's little riffing is from the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance and the Art of Living. From yours truly, Ryan Holiday, my co-author and translator Stephen Hanselman, you can pick up a copy of the Daily Stoic anywhere you buy books over a million copies in print now. And we also have sign copies in the Daily Stoke Store and our limited edition, Leatherbound Edition, which I hope you check out. But let's talk about this quote from Epictetus here. Have you ever been to physical therapy or rehab? No matter what the name implies or how many people you see lying around getting massages, it's not a fun place to be. Turns out that healing hurts. The trained experts know exactly where to exert pressure and what to

subject to stress so that they can strengthen where the patient is weak and help stimulate the areas that have atrophied. Stereocholusophy is a lot like that. Some observations and exercises will touch you on your pressure points. It's nothing personal, it's supposed to hurt. And that's how you develop the will to endure and persevere through life's many challenges. I remember I was in high school and I was always a runner so I wasn't in bad shape, I was in good shape, but I basically had no strength training ever in my life and I was snowboarding one winter and I ended up hurting myself in some accident. I took the sort of jump on a back country hill

and ended up sort of rolling over on my head and I tweaked a vertebrae in my back or I don't remember. But I ended up going to physical therapy for it. And exactly as I'm saying in this entry, you sort of expect it's gonna be cool massages or rehab or I don't know some hot tub or something Jets of water working on you. I got there And they were like oh you just need to do a bunch of sit-ups and that's what I had to do for like several weeks

Returning is they basically put me on a rest a regimen of doing sit-ups and other ab work. They were like, the reason your back is hurt is because it's not supported buttressed enough by muscles in the front. And I was like, well, this sucks, but that's what I had to do. And I feel like life is a lot like that. You know, you go, you want a magical solution, you want someone to do X, Y, or Z for you.

You go to a financial planner and you want them to tell you, here's the magical things I can do that will make you more money. And in fact, they go, here's where you're spending too much money. Here's where you're not being smart enough with your investments. Here's where you're not being patient enough. Do all these things and check in with me in 30 years and you'll be good, right? That's how it is. We want a shortcut and there is no shortcut,

except for the work. And the work is not usually fun, because if it was fun, it wouldn't call it work. It's called fun, right? When you read Marcus Aurelis or Epictetus or Seneca, you're like, man, I feel attacked. Why'd you have to do me like that Marcus? Why'd you have to do me like that Epictetus? It's because they know, they know where you're like, man, I feel attacked. Why'd you have to do me like that, Marcus? Why'd you have to do me like that, Epictetus?

It's because they know, they know where you're sick and we're all sick and we're all weaker than we should be. We've let muscles atrophy. We were hoping for a shortcut. We were hoping someone would take care of it for us. And they can't. You gotta do the work. And probably the first part of the work is accepting where you are not well.

So I love this idea of the Philosopher's Lecture Hall's a hospital. And I see this, you know, on the Daily Stoke socials, people are like, you know, why are they're not more quotes about love or happiness or fun or why is this serious? Why do you have to go and get political? It's isn't supposed to touch you in your happy place all the time. This isn't supposed to tell you what you want to hear. I wouldn't be doing my job if you didn't sometimes feel attacked by what I said.

If you didn't disagree sometimes with what I said, if what I said didn't imply something that challenged you or even offended you. So remember that this is supposed to be hard and it's hard because it's touching you somewhere where you're soft or you haven't done the work and hopefully by feeling that it'll spur you to get where you need to go or at least in dealing with the challenge you will better understand why you've chosen to do or say the things you've chosen to do.

So, with that, it's all for you tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoke.com slash email. So check it out at dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily Stoke early and ad free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. with Wondery Plus and Apple podcasts.