The Daily Stoic - Will You Understand Or Be Understood? | Ask DS

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

There are very few people who feel completely understood. Starting from a young age, our parents didn’t fully get us. Or maybe it was our teachers. Maybe there is some part of us apparently beyond the reach of our spouse or our peers. This is painful. It’s lonely. It’s rough.Epictetus said that there were some things that were up to us and some things that were not.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions during a Q&A session at the end of the Stoicism 101 course. Topics covered include how we can get to the point of loving the obstacle, the overlap between Stoicism and Existentialism, and more.✉️ 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.

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 and 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. Will you understand or be understood? There are very few people who feel completely understood. Starting from a young age, our parents didn't fully get us, or maybe it was our teachers, or maybe there was some part of us apparently beyond the reach of our spouse or our peers. And this is painful and it's lonely and it's rough. Epic Teed has said that there were some things that were up to us and some things that were not.

While we can do our absolute best, articulating how we feel, speaking up to be heard, going to therapy, asking for help, being patient, being vulnerable, in the end, being understood is never going to be fully up to us. It's just not. By definition, it depends on other people. And other people are flawed and busy and sometimes very selfish. But if being understood is not in our control, there's something quite wonderful that is in our control, understanding. We can give what we didn't or haven't got, as we've written about over at Daily Dad.

We can try to see people. we can try to really listen, our own pain and our own loneliness as an upside, taught us the value of being understood, how much it means, how even a little of it can go a long way. Instead of despair and instead of turning inward because we haven't gotten all that we needed, what if we channeled that energy towards being a positive difference maker for others? Focus on what is up to you. Use this as a second chance. We can't always be understood, and certainly we haven't been,

but we can always strive to understand. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree's podcast, Business Wars. And in our new season, two of the world's leading hotel brands, Hilton and Marriott, stare down family drama and financial disasters. Listen to Business Wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast.

We're doing a Q&A today that's actually drawn from the Stoicism 101 course. I think it's one of the best courses we've done over at Daily Stoic. If you're looking to get introduced to Stoicism, you want to take your study of it to the next level. You want to go back to basics or you want to build a really good foundation of what Stoicism is and how you can use it. That's what the course is about. I'll link to that in today's show notes.

But this is drawing from one of the many Q&As we've done as part of the session. People got to come in and ask me a bunch of questions. We're talking about some of Marcus really says stuff about being tolerant with others and strict with yourself. That we can't hold people to standards that they never asked for. And how you sort of think about your friend, how a stoic thinks about their friend group, and how you try to be a positive influence.

So that's where today's Q&A is coming from. It's just a selection, and I hope you join us in Stoicism 101. You can ask some of your own questions, and I'll link to that in today's show notes, or just type in Stoicism 101 in the Daily Stoke Store. Hello. Hi. I've been listening to your podcast every morning for the last couple of months and it's amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for what you do. So I'm struggling with two concepts.

What you call the obstacle is the way it's something that I can actually relate to and incorporate. So whatever it is, you make it part of your journey or whatever situation you're in. But then I hear you talking about the concept of a more fatty. There's something that is actually new to me. I've never heard of that before. And I'm actually struggling with that. It's like I can make the obstacle part of a wave, but just get to the point you love the obstacle. It's really hard for me. Yeah, let me, there was something I just saw.

Let me read this to you. Let me find it here. I thought this was beautiful. I'm gonna reference the, I'm gonna reference the Robin Waterfield translation we've been talking about. But let me find this here. This is Meditations 5-8.

He says, there are two reasons then why you should gladly accept whatever happens to you. First, because the experience happened to you, was prescribed for you, was the product of a web somehow woven just for you way back in time out of the most ancient causes. Second, because for the directing principle of the universe, even what happens to each of us as individuals plays a part in its advancement perfection and that by Zeus, it's very preservation. So this is what Robin Waterfield says in his annotation. He says, because there is an unending chain of cause and effects

since time began, what happens to you today has been ordained since the beginning of time. So I thought that was quite, so when we think about a more faulty, it's not just like, hey, I'm gonna figure out a way to muddle through this and make the most of it. It's that think of everything that led up to where you are right now. Thousands of years of history, you know, you've got the planets behind

you. Think of the big bang creating, you know, even this moment, like so billions and billions of years of seemingly unrelated events. We're actually working in beautiful concert with each other to bring about what has just happened. Even if that thing is tragic or frustrating or obnoxious or unraveling, something that you yourself had worked very hard on, right? So the stills did have this sense of like that there was some sort of higher power garden guiding things along, which I think is helpful to understand it, but I to me the idea is, hey, something led up to this, I'm not sure I am even capable of comprehending all of it so I'm going to go with it, right? I think

that's part one. The other thing with this idea of so so there's another part in meditations where Marcus says look a fire consumes what you throw in front of it. He says but a small fire like if you had a small flame and you just threw a log on top of it it would put the fire out right? It would it would squash it but if it was a strong fire, it would turn that into fuel, right? So to me, the obstacle is the way, or I'm just going to accept this. That's kind of like small fire, right? But a more façade is like this big fire. This is like, it doesn't matter what this is.

I'm going to turn this into something that's great. Does that make sense? Makes sense. Thank you. Yeah. turn this into something that's great. Does that make sense? Makes sense. Thank you. Yeah. There's another one about that recent Mark Man's in article that I think you've read about how

he's not a stoic and the overlap between stoicism and existentialism. Yeah, so I thought Mark's piece was good. He's a friend of mine. I love his stuff. I know we've had him on the podcast, and I think we did a text interview or two before. So I love Mark.

It's totally fine that we would disagree about some stuff. When I look at the existentialist first of the Stoics, I, to me, the pretty simple test is like, who did more for humanity, right? When I look at some of these modern schools, I see them as having some interesting questions, right? I think Camus is fascinating and poses some good questions. But to me, the sort of deciding sort of vote for the Stelox is that these were like real

people who did things in the real world. And if everyone was an existentialist, I'm not sure where that would leave us. Yeah, someone made the distinction here between pen and in philosophers and practicing philosophers. And I think that's well said. Hey, Ryan. Hi. Um, question about routine and breaking out of it. This is something I kind of experienced last year, not having, like going from kind of having an opportunity outside of the pandemic pre-lockdown to break routines.

I'm very like routine and habit focused. So I was wondering and I don't know, I'm trying to think of like stoic references to this about, you know, being able to seek out new things and kind of, you know, break out of your comforts, comfort zone, even if you're, you know, you're very consistent and all that. So. Totally. I think one of the problems with routine is that it can sort of become almost like dog nut.

You can make you very rigid. And it can almost be like a form of OCD. You're like, this is the way I do things. This is how I prevent the world from collapsing. And then, you know, if I don't do this thing by seven o'clock, like the whole world will end. Which is obviously, the point of routine is that it should make you more productive and more resilient,

not more fragile and more sort of dependent. So two things that have been helpful for me. One having kids was great because it just sort of blows your life apart. And you know, the idea that you're in control of the day sort of gets shattered very quickly. And one of the things that came out of that for me was the idea of like routines plural versus routine. So like when I and I guess I'd already figured this out, but it's like when I travel I have a different routine than I do at home. At home, I sort of know how the day is likely to begin or end so I can sort of organize things accordingly. When I'm traveling,

you know, usually you don't. So it's like, I know I have to say like run in the morning because I probably won't get time to do that in the afternoon. So I like the idea of having different routines that I sort of default to depending on how things go, right? So it's like, if your routine is like, hey, this is what I do in the morning, and it's weather dependent, obviously you have to have another routine if you wake up and it's snowing. So I think the idea of thinking about routines

plural has been good. The other thing I might think about is just like, I remember I was reading about an NFL kicker who sort of, he was not only not superstitious, he was actively on guard from preventing superstitions from happening. So it's like, if he wore a pair of socks and he had like a couple good games in a row,

he would like get rid of those socks. So he didn't, so those didn't become his lucky socks, right? And so I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes I try to think like, okay, what do I normally do as part of my routine? And now I'm going to do it deliberately the other way. So I don't become addicted to only having it my way. Like, I remember like, for instance, like before I write or like give a talk, like I like to like sort of start the day like shower and in shaving because like I just feel fresher that way. But what if the plane arrives,

you know, what if I'm on a red eye flight and I have to go straight to the thing, right? Well, I will have the opportunity to do that. So when that happens, I go, I'm practicing the opposite of the routine, just to prove to myself that the routine doesn't actually matter. There is no superpower in, you know, touching, flipping the light switch on and off three times before I go in the room.

That's just something in my head, you know what I mean? No, that totally makes sense. But great question. 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 Plus in Apple Podcasts. When we think of sports stories, we tend to think of tales of epic on the field glory. But the new podcast, Sports Explains the World, brings you some of the wildest and most surprising sports stories you've never heard, like the teenager who wrote a fake Wikipedia page for a young athlete

and then watched as a real team fell for his prank. Diving into his Wikipedia page we turned three career goals into 11, added 20 new assists for good measure. Figures that nobody would, should, have believed. And the mysterious secret of a US Olympic superstar killed at the peak of his career. Was it an accident? Did the police screw up the investigation? It was also nebulous.

Each week, Sports Explains the World goes beyond leagues and stats to share stories that will redefine your understanding of sports and their impact on the world. Listen to Sports Explains the World on the Wondering App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Sports Explains the World early and ad-free on Wondry Plus.