The Daily Stoic - You Must Question | A Garden Is Not For Show

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Marcus Aurelius was a man who did not partake in the base pleasures of his time. While other Romans saw the death and the carnage of the colosseum as entertainment, Marcus did not. While other Romans–particularly rich, male Romans–saw their slaves not just as property but as walking pleasure machines, Marcus Aurelius did not.📕Pre-order Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" and get exclusive pre-order bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/preorder ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See 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 Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 365 meditations on wisdom, perseverance in the art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author

and collaborator, Steve Enhancelman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Marks, Relius, 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. time while other Romans saw the death and carnage of the Colosseum as entertainment. Marcus did not. While other Romans, particularly the rich male Romans, saw their slaves, not just his property, but his walking pleasure machines. Marcus Aurelius did not. Good for him. It was a remarkable thing to be above the passions and sins of your age. But as Gregory Hayes points out in his wonderful preface to meditations, which we sell at the Panniforce Bookshop, Marcus was not quite as impressive as you might think. Marcus finds the gladiatorial combat and brutal executions of the arena a source of tedium, Hayes writes, that they might be morally wrong, never seems to have occurred to him.

He prides himself on not having taken sexual advantage of his slaves, not because it would have been harmful or unjust to them, but because such self-indulgence would have been damaging to his own character. There is no sign that he ever questions slavery as an institution. It's possible to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and in this case, that's what Marcus was doing. It wasn't justice that was motivating him to turn away from slavery.

It wasn't a belief in the human dignity and rights that was keeping his hands off of his slaves. It was self-discipline. He was in control of himself, which is good and impressive, but he was failing to see the fuller picture, failing to live up to the belief he writes in meditations about a society of equal laws governed by equality of status and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. It was good that he resisted the excesses of his time, but he should have. He could have done more to question them as all of us should. Our self-discipline is a virtue, but it cannot be the only virtue. We cannot forget our duties to each other. We cannot ignore or take for granted various injustices. We must question them.

We must challenge them. And if we ever find ourselves in a position of leadership and power as Marcus did, we must do something about them. A garden is not for show. A garden is not for show. This is today's entry September 15th in the Daily Stoic. And the quote today is from Epic Titus' Discourses 4-8. He says, first practice not letting people know who you are. Keep your philosophy to yourself for a bit.

Injust the manner that fruit is produced, the seed buried for a season hidden, growing gradually so that it may come for full maturity. But if the grain sprouts before the stock is fully developed, it will never ripen. That's the kind of plant you are displaying fruit too soon and the winter will kill you. You know, after you listen to this podcast for a while or follow us on Instagram, it might be tempting to say, oh, this is great. I get it. I'm a stoic. I've always been that way. But it's not that easy just because you agree with the philosophy.

Doesn't mean the roots have fully taken hold. Fooling around with books so you can sound smarter. Have an intimidating library is like tending a garden to impress your neighbors. Growing one to feed someone, that's a pure and profitable use of your time. The seeds of stoicism are long underground. Do the work required to nurture and tend to them so that they and you are prepared and sturdy for the hard winters of life. The idea is not that we get credit for working on a book,

that we get credit for doing this or that. It's that we are actually doing it. The doing is important. And I deeply believe this, that talking and doing fight for the same resources. And you have to cultivate a willingness to be misunderstood, to be not fully appreciated, to just be like, I'm working on my stuff, man, I'm developing, I don't need your approval,

I don't need your recognition. I talk about this actually, in the ego is the enemy, there was a great Twitter account, a Tumblr account, I forget exactly, a couple years ago called, I'm working on my novel, and it's just people telling other people how they're working on their thing. Are they? Are they really?

No, by definition, they are not. They wouldn't have posted this, right? So part of this idea is cultivating, you know, epic tea, this also says, you know, if you want to improve, be content to be misunderstood and appreciate it. Be content to be foolish. Say I don't know about that. You know, he means to not talk about being a stoic, not to identify with being a stoic,

but to quietly work on being one to quietly get to work on that project, to put in the hours, to put your butt where it should be, do the work, leave the recognition, the understanding, the appreciation to someone or something else. That's not why you're doing it. That's not what's motivating you. That's not what is important. So I'm going to leave you here today, let you get after it, get to work, turn this off, go after it, make some progress. It's not that life is short, Seneca says. It's that we waste a lot of it.

The practice of momentum, the meditation on death, is one of the most powerful and eye-opening things that there is. You built this Memento Mori calendar for Dio Stoke to illustrate that exact idea that your life in the best case scenario is 4,000 weeks. Are you going to let those weeks slip by or are you going to seize them? The act of slip by or you going to seize them. The act of unrolling this calendar, putting it on your wall, and every single week that bubble is filled in, that black mark is marking it off forever. Have something to show, not just for your years, but for every single dot that you filled in, that you really lived that week, that you made something of it. You can check it out at dailystoke.com slash m and calendar. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music,

download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add 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 Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wonder yet.