The Daily Stoic - You Should Meditate on Greatness

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

"The Stoics were some of the keenest admirers of human greatness. Marcus Aurelius opens his Meditations with seventeen entries—nearly ten percent of the book—reflecting upon the various influential individuals in his life. Nearly every other page thereafter has at least one quote or one story or one mention of a story about his heroes: Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Hadrian, Augustus, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Diogenes—'When you need encouragement,' he wrote, explaining this practice, 'think of the qualities the people around you have.'"Learn about the importance of reflecting on the best of those who came before us, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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 Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery'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. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has

guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystowoc.com. You should meditate on greatness. The Stowocs were some of the keenest admirers of human greatness. Marcus Aurelius opens meditations with 17 entries, nearly 10% of the book reflecting upon the various influential individuals in his life. Nearly every other page thereafter has at least some quote or one story or one mention of a story about his heroes.

Socrates, Plato, Epicetus, Anteninus, Augustus, Herocletus, Pythagoras, Diogenes. When you need encouragement, he wrote explaining this practice, think of the qualities the people around you have. Marcus was constantly thinking of the qualities of the greats, and clearly this had an effect on him as a person. Somehow, despite facing incredible temptations and pressures, he too became a great man worthy of the countless statues made of his likeness, many of which survived to this day. Recently, we had a discussion with the sculptor, ES Schubert, whom we commissioned to design the original portrait bust of Marcus Aurelius for dailystoeuk.com. Given that ES has spent his life shaping people's likeness into clay and marble and other materials, he seemed that like the right person to ask, why do statues matter? He said,

we all need load stars, and we need constant daily, hourly, and minute by minute reminders of how we want to act in the world. Obviously portraits and monuments of great thinkers, philanthropists, and innovators are a great way to do that. And then more broadly, there is joy to be found in things that exist for no definably productive purpose. In a culture increasingly focused on measuring everything he said and supremely valuing productivity, it's difficult to quantify why we should spend money on art both publicly and privately, but this isn't a race.

There isn't an end goal, just an end. So how we enjoy the journey matters. Beautiful things exist just because they we enjoy the journey matters. Beautiful things exist just because they exist make the journey better. It's okay for us just to want to look beautiful things. Even the Stoics who were not much for material possessions seem to have made a special exemption for beautiful statues. As Seneca wrote, our predecessors have worked much improvement. Why should I not keep statues of great men to kindle my enthusiasm? Why should I not continually greet them with respect

and honor? And as we have written about before, Matthew Arnold spoke about the symbolism of Marcus's bus as it wasn't a mere depiction of a deceased emperor, but a humble reminder of the passage of a great man upon the earth. Life is very short, and the good life is easy to miss. That is why art is so important. It inspires us. It calls us to greatness. We can look at it, touch it, and be looked at it, and touched by it, in return. And that's a special thing. And I just recorded this looking across my desk at my Marcus Aurelius statue, which yes, Schubert was nice enough to make for me. We sell them in the Daily Stoke story. You can see it at dailystoke.com slash statue. But I have this there because it's a reminder of the principles that Marcus lived by. It's a reminder of what I'm trying to be in my

writing, in my life, and having that there to greet and honor and to kindle my enthusiasm, as Seneca said, is just really, really important and powerful. So I hope you check it out, go to dailystog.com slash.u or just go to the daily stog store at dailystog.com slash store. 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 Codopaxi, 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. Wondering how.