The Daily Stoic - Yes, This Is How It Is | The Obstacle Is The Way

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Nearly every day was a terror. People died of easily curable diseases. People starved to death. People were clapped into slavery. Wars broke out–fought literally to the knife–where the losers were executed alongside civilian populations…their cities razed to the ground.Seneca was exiled. Marcus Aurelius buried his own children. Epictetus was tortured, leaving him disabled for life. Yet somehow they wrote and spoke a philosophy that had within it, cheerfulness and love and lofty words about meaning and purpose. How did they even get out of bed in the morning, let alone smile?---And in today's excerpt from The Daily Stoic, Ryan delves into what the Stoics really mean by "The Obstacle Is The Way."📘 Visit The Painted Porch to check out Pierre Hadot's The Inner Citadel.✉️ 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. On Friday, we do double-duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and a literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, I will give you a quick meditation from the Stokes with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words to works.

Yes, this is how it is. Nearly every day was a tear. People died of easily curable diseases, people starve to death, people are clapped into slavery, wars broke out, fought literally to the knife, where the losers were executed alongside civilian populations. Their cities raised to the ground. Seneca was exiled. Marcus really buried his own children. Epictetus was tortured, leaving him disabled for life. Yet somehow they wrote and spoke a philosophy that had within it a cheerfulness and a love and lofty words about meaning and purpose. How did they even get out of bed

in the morning let alone smile? There is a great lyric in the Florence and the machine song, Free. It expresses this very bafflement. The answer to that is basically, yeah, that is how it is, how it's always been and always will be. People are awful. For some cruelty is the point. Things are hard, things go wrong, people hurt, people die.

We don't control that. We do control whether we keep going. We control whether we let those bastards get us down, we control whether we let them implicate us in ugliness as Marcus really is wrote, we control whether we keep singing, keep smiling. A more faulty, live with virtue. Life can get you down. I'm no stranger to that.

When I find things are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something. Obviously, I use my journal, obviously I turn to stochism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff. And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote,

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many years, eight years old? Yeah, it's unbelievable to me. But let's get into today's quote, because we have the fuller quote here from Mark Cerelysis. People don't know this quote that I derived the obstacles away from, comes from Meditations 520. Mark Cerelysis, while it's true that someone can impede our actions,

they can't impede our intentions and our attitudes, which have the power of being conditional and adaptable. For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its actions into a means of achieving it. That, which is an impediment to action, is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way. And I will give you the haze translation as well because I just love it I actually think there's a really good translation. I'm a big fan of Pierre Hadoe in his book The Interceded El which I carried the pain of Portrait linked to in today's episode but

Hadoe does his own translation of meditations which has not been published except for the excerpts in the book, and there's a really good one inside the inner citadel, which you should read. But here's Haze's rendering of the same passage, Meditations 520. In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and to put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us, like sun, and wind, and animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its

own purposes, the obstacle to our acting, the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way, becomes the way. I just love that passage, and I'll give you what I say in the Daily Stoke. Today things will happen that will be contrary to your plans. If not today, then certainly tomorrow, and as a result of these obstacles, you will not be able to do what you planned. That is not as bad as it seems because your mind is infinitely elastic and adaptable. You have the power to use the stoic exercise of turning obstacles upside down, which takes one negative circumstance and uses it as an opportunity to practice

an unintended virtue or form of excellence. Something prevents you from getting to your destination on time, then this is a chance to practice patience. If an employee makes an expensive mistake, then this is a chance to teach a valuable lesson. If a computer glitch erases your work, then it is a chance to start over with a clean slate. If someone hurts you, it is a chance to practice forgiveness. If something is hard, it is a chance to get stronger. Try this line of thinking and see if there is a situation in which one could not find some virtue to practice or to arrive some benefit. The truth is there isn't one. Every impediment can advance action in some form or another. I think there are a couple

of things here. I'm not saying that some terrible thing awful unfortunate tragic event that happened is just wonderful it's that The nature of that event presents within it opportunities to be great take the last couple years no one would choose this It's tragic. It's unfortunate. It's been ghastly in the in the immensity of the destruction with which it has wrought. But, right? I have tried to focus on my family. I have tried to focus on being more community-minded, tried to focus on my stillness. I've tried to focus on improving my work habits. I've tried to focus on being present. I've tried to adjust my news habits. My marriage is better. I open this bookstore. I have improved in innumerable ways. If you could ask me, if you said,

Ryan, you got to get of all that back up. You have to give all of that back. But there won't be a pandemic. Of course, I would say, yes, of course, there's other ways to do it. But the thing happened, and it is a chance to step up, to grow, to change, to practice different virtues. That's what the obstacle is the way it means. It's not that every negative thing is positive. It's that there is a chance to practice positive traits in response to the things that have happened.

But second, if you notice the full quote from Marcus, in the obstacles the way I'm really talking about all forms of obstacles, Marcus is specifically talking about difficult people. He's saying difficult people are a chance to practice these virtues. That when someone is frustrating or mean or stupid or annoying or dishonest or cruel or aggressive blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, these are opportunities to call from yourself positive virtues, patience, kindness, forgiveness, you know, creativity, etc. You got to use that situation. So that's what the obstacle is the way it means to me. That's why I have a tattooed here on my

Left arm. That's why we make the challenge coin. By the way, I don't know if you know this, but if you if you've liked That's why we make the challenge coin. By the way, I don't know if you know this, but if you liked the Episcopal's the way you want to give it as if we have a leather bound edition, which you can check out in the daily stoke store or you pick up the painted porch. But the point is, this is the philosophy with which I try to live my life. Stuff happens. How do we grow from it? How do we improve from it?

How do we use it as an opportunity to be better? I have this little thing that I actually wrote to myself in 2020. I said, 2020 is a test. What makes you a better person or a worse one? That's the part of it you decide, right? I had no idea that the pandemic would run all the way through 2020 and 2021 and we'd be back in 2022. All I knew was I was going to become a better person as a result of it. Could it kill me? Right? It could not be appreciated.

It could be all number of things. But I control that. I controlled what I did in response of it to it. And that's what you control always. That's what the obstacle is the way means to what Marcus is saying. And as it happens, there's also a zen expression. The obstacle is the path, the obstacle is the way, the impediment to action advances action with stance and the way becomes the way.

Don't forget it. And of course, check out the leather bound at store.dailystart.com. And we have a really cool challenge coin. You can carry it with you too. Actually, if I remember correctly, the book comes with a challenge coin, so you can get two for one there. 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. Hey there listeners!

While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Cotopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time,

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