The Daily Stoic - We Have To Give It Back | Always Ask Yourself This Question

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 podcasts. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audiobooks in the car. Instead of having that be dead time, we want to use it to have a live time. We really want to help their imagination soar. And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories,

Starting point is 00:00:25 self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love, maybe you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audio books without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app.

Starting point is 00:00:40 And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing right now on Audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30 day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You'll get Right Thing right now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to

Starting point is 00:01:13 do a deeper dive setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on something to think on something to leave you with to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it. We have to give it back. It is inevitable and unavoidable. But that doesn't make it easy. Not now or 2,000 years ago. Death is hard. Loss is terrible. The Stoics knew this. We hear of Marcus Aurelius

Starting point is 00:01:54 crying over the loss of a beloved tutor. We know Seneca was rocked by the loss of his child. We can see in his moving essays on grief that he understood from his own pain that this wasn't something that you could just shrug off no matter how much stoic philosophy a person read. A couple of weeks ago, we pointed out that even though Daily Stoic hasn't been around that long, we've already lost many of our favorite guests and influences, Peter Lawler, Paul Woodruff, Michael Sugru,

Starting point is 00:02:23 Dr. Sue Johnson. Today, we must add another to that list, Jake Seliger. If you remember, Jake was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year at age 39, and in the midst of that fight, not only wrote many beautiful words about suffering and mortality and love, but he also gave a very moving interview

Starting point is 00:02:41 on the Daily Stoke podcast, despite having had his tongue removed. In one sense, Jake was very unlucky. In the prime of his life, he was struck down by a surprise cancer of the throat and lungs despite not smoking or chewing. He had plenty of reasons to be angry and sad, yet what reverberated through his writings was real stoicism, the wisdom that comes from wrestling with the unfairness of life and the looming fact of his mortality. "'Many of us don't get what I've had,' he explained, the opportunity to live a full,

Starting point is 00:03:14 generative life with the people who I love and who love me back. Yet I was able to have all of it,' he said for a time. Jake faced death with courage and poised these last few weeks, a final lesson for all of us. Let no one say he went easily. When you hear him struggle to talk despite his failing body, it's clear that he was a fighter. He made it months longer than expected. He rested more from the bureaucratic nightmare that is the healthcare system than few could have managed. He leaves behind not only those lessons in that example and many suggested improvements for clinical trial reform, but also his wife, Bess, and a daughter, Athena, who he did

Starting point is 00:03:54 not live to see. He had to give the gift back, he said, of life. But in those extra months he lived, he was able to give the gift of life to the next generation. He will be missed. And we want to thank everyone. This was a hard one for me to write, I have to say. Jake's someone I got to know over the years and here let me see, I'll find the email that I sent him. We got to touch base one more time before he went and I said, I can't say what I've been more impressed with

Starting point is 00:04:24 your writing or your courage. I feel sad that only this last year or so pushed us to be more than the occasional email, but it's been a moving and educational experience for me. I said, I'm proud of you and we'll miss you. I don't know many people whose stuff I read that I would seriously notice if they stopped. And I said, your kid will be lucky in the sense that they have so much of you in those words. Said, farewell, though I can't hope, but you'll keep surprising us as you have all these few months. Well, that was not to be, but I'm glad I got to say goodbye. It's always hard.

Starting point is 00:04:55 It's never easy. For everyone who contributed to Jake's GoFundMe campaign over the last year to help fund his cancer treatment and get him to these clinical trials. Thank you for that. You can continue to support Jake and his family at the same GoFundMe. I'll link to that in today's show notes. I'm going to make a donation. I can't even imagine what it would be like knowing that you had a kid on the way and

Starting point is 00:05:18 clock was running out for you. It was a moving thing and a very brave thing and that's why I wanted to write today's email and record this quick episode. But do check out the GoFundMe if you've got a couple of extra dollars to throw in there. Obviously, I'm going to do that. I'll miss you, Jake. See you. Always ask yourself this question. Much of what we do and say during the course of a week is completely unnecessary. Meetings, material possessions, confrontations, pursuits, pointless distractions and problems. They take us away from tranquility and purpose. And as Stoic cuts through

Starting point is 00:06:02 these temptations and obligations by asking a simple question, a question that should lead you in your journaling and thinking this week. It is this, before speaking and acting or buying something, just ask, is this a necessary thing? This is from today's entry in The Daily Stoic, Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly Ryan Holiday. You can get it anywhere books are sold. I do it every single morning including this morning. And you can also buy a signed copy in the Daily Stoke store. But today's quotes, we have one

Starting point is 00:06:36 long quote from Marcus Sturiles and one short one from Seneca. Marcus Sturiles says, it is said that if you want to have peace of mind, busy yourself with little, but wouldn't a better saying be do what you must and as required of a rational being created for public life? For this brings not only the peace of mind of doing few things, but the greater peace of doing them well. Since the vast majority of our words and actions

Starting point is 00:06:58 are unnecessary, corralling them will create an abundance of leisure and tranquility. As a result, we shouldn't forget at each moment to ask, is this one of the unnecessary things? But we must corral not only unnecessary actions, but unnecessary thoughts too. So needless acts don't tag along after them. That's our translation from the Daily Stoke and the Daily Stoke Journal. Let me give you Gregory Hayes, which I also really like. He says, if you seek tranquility, do less,

Starting point is 00:07:29 or more accurately, do what is essential, what the logos of a social being requires and in the requisite way, which brings the double satisfaction to do less better. Because most of what we do and say, and it's not essential. If you can eliminate this, you'll have more time and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary? But we need to eliminate

Starting point is 00:07:51 unnecessary assumptions as well to eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow. And then our second quote from Seneca is, I was shipwrecked before I even boarded. The journey showed me this, but how much of what we have is unnecessary and how easily we can decide to rid ourselves of these things whenever it's necessary and thus never suffering to loss. That's Moral Letters 87.1. So you really need to stop and ask yourself this question, is what I'm doing necessary? Why am I doing?

Starting point is 00:08:22 Is it just the way people have always done it? All the reasons we do things. But again, most of what we do and say and think is not necessary. It's not even particularly effective or well thought out. And so to question this is really important. And it's not just like, oh, you're privileged, you have a choice, that's why you're not doing it. It's actually not about privilege at all. In fact, it's the privileged people who can afford to do more unnecessary things, more pointless things. It's actually, at this point in my career, I have the luxury of taking a lot of time off to, let's say,

Starting point is 00:08:56 do press for a book. It was actually earlier in my career that the costs of agreeing to this pointless stuff were much higher, but I wasn't aware of it. I wasn't fully understanding of the opportunity cost, how much this was taking me away from writing, how much this was taking me away from relationships, how much this was just taking me away from recovering and refreshing so I could go back to my work from a fresher point of view.

Starting point is 00:09:19 This is what I wanted to leave you with today. Take a minute, stop, ask yourself, is what I'm doing necessary? How much of what I'm doing is unnecessary? And how can I eliminate some of that stuff so I can do the essential things better, right? I'm doing less, but I'm doing all my stuff better now. And I hope that's true for you as well. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast.

Starting point is 00:09:46 I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. If you like 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.

Starting point is 00:10:31 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. Welcome to the Offensive Line. You guys on this podcast, we're going to make some picks, talk some sh**, and hopefully make you some money in the process. I'm your host, Annie Agar. So here's how this show's going to work, okay? We're going to run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories

Starting point is 00:10:58 like no offense. No offense, Travis Kelce, but you got to step up your game if Pat Mahomes is saying the Chiefs need to have more fun this year. We're also handing out a series of awards and making picks for the top storylines surrounding the world of football. Awards like the He May Have a Point Award for the wide receiver that's most justifiably bitter. Is it Brandon Iyuk, T Higgins, or Devante Adams? Plus on Thursdays we're doing an exclusive bonus episode on Wondery+, where I share my

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The Daily Stoic - We Have To Give It Back | Always Ask Yourself This Question

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