The Daily Stoic - What Do You See? | Ask Ds

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

A man walks through a field of flowing grain, the grass bending low under its own weight. The wind blows softly on a cold day. He looks and sees a small bird sitting on a branch, the steam rising off the ground behind it. The bird takes flight and he follows it with his eyes, smiling at the beauty of nature’s inadvertence.But when the man turns, you see that he is surrounded by darkness–uprooted trees and thick mud. An army marches to get behind thick, sharp palisades. Weapons of war are being prepared to do terrible damage. Within seconds, ferocious, ceaseless, primal violence will erupt.✉️ 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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purchase of $20 or more using the code daily stoic 20. Hello listeners, this is Mike Corey of Against the Odds. You might know that I adventure around the world while recording this podcast and over the years I've learned that where I stay when I travel can make all the difference. Airbnb has been my go-to place for finding the perfect accommodations. Because with hotels, you often don't have the luxury of extra space or privacy. Recently, I had a bunch of friends come down to visit in Mexico. We found this large house, and the place had a pool, a barbecue, a kitchen, and a great big living room to play cards, watch movies, and just chill out.

It honestly made all the difference in the trip. It felt like we were all roommates again. The next time you're planning a trip, whether it's with friends, family, or yourself, check out Airbnb to find something you won't forget. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well on Thursdays we not only read the daily meditation but we answer some questions from listeners in fellow Stoics, we're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are.

Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with daily stoic life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happen to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you. What do you see? A man walks through a field of flowing grain. The grass is bending low under its own weight. The wind blows softly on a cold day. He looks and sees a small bird sitting on a branch. The steam rising off the ground behind it. The bird takes flight and follows it with his eyes, smiling at the beauty of nature's inadvertence. But when the man turns, you can see that he is surrounded by darkness, uprooted trees and thick mud,

and army marches to get behind thick, sharp palisades, weapons of war are being prepared to do terrible damage, within seconds ferocious, ceaseless, and primal violence will erupt. You may recognize this description as the opening scene from the movie Gladiator. It's a fictionalized portrayal of the wars that Marcus at Relius himself participated in. It also happens to be through the stoic character Maximus, a perfect illustration of the idea that how we choose to see things determines what they are. In the midst of such a desolate and awful place, Maximus is able to channel his idle Marcus Aurelius and find a few fleeting seconds of beauty and goodness. He's able to die his soul with the color of his thoughts

to borrow another phrase from Marcus. Milton would later say that man can make a hell of heaven and a heaven of hell. That's what Maximus was doing. What Ridley Scott, the filmmaker, was showing that we are able to do. The perspective we take, the lens we look through, the subject we decide to focus the camera on, this is everything. Marcus Aurelius knew this firsthand, living through all those wars as well as a devastating plague and so many other tragedies. His times featured all the things that depress and scare us today in an almost every way they were worse than what we are experiencing today, but he still managed to find beauty and

peace and something to smile about. worse than what we are experiencing today, but he still managed to find beauty and peace, and something to smile about. Certainly, you can do the same. Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoke. Thanks. You guys send me your questions to info at dailystoke.com. You're pressing questions about stoicism, about Marx. It's really about Seneca, about me, about reading, whatever it is. You ask the questions. I do my best to answer. We put it up on the podcast. I've got some cool questions for you. The Stokes talk about ignoring praise and jeers of doing what's right, but how

would a Stoic response to someone who ignores the praise or jeers, but they're doing it to do the wrong thing? Isn't this a way to sort of be unethical? I think that's a great question. You know, I think at the core of Stoicism is the belief in virtue, the idea of doing the right thing. That's obviously there is a, that's hard to define. I feel like if there's a failing in the stoics, there is no stoic 10 commandments where it's like very clear what the stoic, stoics things you should and shouldn't do. It's almost just sort of expected that we're to know what virtue is. But there is an argument to be made

that like what stillic, what stillicism could do is just make you a better sociopath. Like by removing your fears, your worries, carrying what other people think it's just making you worse. And obviously that's not what the Stokes intended. There are certainly people, you know, we see people in the pickup community,

or you know, there have been not good people in history and they're not good people now who are reading these, you know, sort of ideas, and they're not using it to be better. But I think this is where the reading in Stoicism really becomes important because when you truly read markets are really, it's not just saying, you know, ignore the praise in cheers so you can do whatever you want, the way that a previous emperor like Nero or

Tiberius acted, he's saying, he's saying, don't listen to them so you can, you know, do what's good for the like all of Rome. So don't care about appearances so that way you're not distracted or tempted by money. He's like don't care about impressing people so you don't need to be like fooling around with beautiful women. He's trying to use this to get him closer to his moral code, to be closer to living in accordance with nature, as the Stoics say. He's trying to use this idea of pushing aside the crowd, the mob, as they call it in Rome,

so he could focus on what he knew was true, what he knew was good, what he believed was ethical, what, as he says, what's bad for the hive, is bad for the bee, what's bad for the hive, for the bee, what's bad for the bee is bad for the hive. He's thinking fundamentally about the common good, about serving the common good, about being of service, about helping people. And so he's not using that to be more selfish.

He's actually trying to not be distracted or misled by the very human impulse of wanting sort of short-term approval, wanting to impress other people, wanting status or money or fame or legacy or recognition or credit. He says, don't think about people's cheers or cheers, just do the right thing. He's saying, do the right thing, because it's the right thing, whether it's helping somebody saying, help someone because you want to do it because they need it, is just don't think about the third thing

which is getting credit for it. So fundamentally to me, what that idea of ignoring praise and criticism is about just not caring about credit, not caring about recognition, not caring about recognition, but instead focusing all that energy on doing the right thing for the right reasons. So I was in, I gave a talk in Bucharest, which was really quite never been to Romania, and then believe it or not, my Romanian publisher, which is called, they're called Seneca Publishing,

they have a stoicism-themed cafe called the Seneca Anticafe in Bucharest, which I thought was amazing, and really cool, definitely check it out. And then, so I went from Bucharest to Bucharest where I gave a TEDx talk, and it occurred to me as, I never really been to Budapest,

I've been so fried, I was on book tour. I was like, isn't there like a Marcus a really Buddhist connection? And I was like, oh yeah, he spent like years of his life there. I think it's a Quinn Cumb. I'm terrible pronouncing these words, but there was a Roman military camp outside Budapest on the Danube River.

And that's where Marcus really spent like several months, they think he actually wrote a large chunk of meditations there. And so you could walk the streets of this Roman town, and it's just incredible. You can, there is a public bath like from a thermal underground spring that you can visit. It was closed when I was there,

so I had to go to a different one that was only dating back to the 1600s. But you can take a steam bath in a hot spring that is the same water that Marcus Relius may have used 2000 years ago. I just thought that was absolutely incredible. I know you're not supposed to, but I picked up a rock while I was there,

and I keep it on my desk now. But it's just amazing. There's a small museum there. There's Roman ruins. You don't think of the Roman Empire stretching as far as Hungary. You don't think you would see ruins of a Roman aqueduct next to a freeway in Budapest, but you can.

I do think when we're traveling, the idea of seeking out some of these sites and walking through them and just imagining what was here, imagining our connection to the people that were here, realizing that people are gonna walk through the ruins of our cities 2,000 years from now and experience a similar thing is a very stoic, it's a very meditative practice, it's very soothing,

and sort of rejuvenating, but also humbling at the same time. So it was really awesome, and I'm glad I got to do it. Got some cool questions for you. Wrote in with some not-fun news, he said, his house got broken into, and he wanted to know about overcoming something like that, how do you bounce back from that, you don't feel good about it.

So first up, I would say, sorry, like I've been there in 2013. I just bought my first house and I also bought an engagement ring for my wife, which I did not tell her about, and I put it in a safe, and our downstairs closet, and we went out of town,

and there were some Airbnb renters in our house, and we got a call from them that while they were out someone had broken into the house, they'd stolen everything, they'd trashed our couches, they'd torn things off the wall, they'd broken windows and they were in it long enough that they busted open the safe and stole the engagement ring that I was planning to propose to my wife with.

So that was, you know, let's just say that was not fun. And that was not how I was planning to tell my wife that that's what we were doing. So the truth is, the source of say, like shit happens, life is rough. And I think one of the things I took from that was like, it's easy to get feel really soft, feel really protected, get kind of in a bubble

of your own experience and just expect the life to be kind and amazing and everything you want. I think one of the things you realize from reading Marcus Aurelius is like, this guy had everything and life was still hard. I mean, to go to your point about getting broken into, there's a story from Epic Titus about a thief breaking into his house and stealing a lamp. And what he takes from that, and I think this is the second thing, he goes like, look, you can only lose what

you have. He says, tomorrow, I'm going to go out and buy a cheaper lamp. And that way I'm not going to be as paranoid about it. So that was one of the things I took from the experience was, like, not only had I gotten a little soft, a little vulnerable, I wasn't careful, but I also set myself up to be too attached to material items. And so I wanted to learn from the experience, be a little less attached, be a little less in my bubble.

And then it ended up being, like this is a story that my wife and I have. It's an experience actually, our wedding announcement. We got selected. It was in the New York Times. And we got to tell that story. And that wouldn't have happened had we had just like an ordinary getting engaged experience. And so, like, how can you use this?

That's what the obstacle is the way, the impediment to action, advances action. As Mark said, really says, everything that happens presents us an opportunity to practice a different virtue. That's what we want to do. That's what I'd urge you to think about. I'm really sorry that this happened. I wished everyone was nice. I wish we could leave our doors unlocked, but that's not the reality we live in, and that's unfortunate. But how are you going to toughen? You have a better, you'll be more successful toughening yourself up than you will hoping that nothing bad ever happens. So at the very least, if you come out of this a little stronger, a little wiser, a little

more careful, and a little more aware that our possessions are a femoral and can be taken from us, I think you'll be better. So that's another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. Thanks, thanks to our sponsors, thank you for listening, thank you for watching. Subscribe to the Daily Stoke podcast, subscribe to the Daily Stoke email, that's at dailystoke.com, and of course, subscribe to us here on YouTube. Thanks, talk soon. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery

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