The Daily Stoic - 100 Lessons from Marcus Aurelius

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Meditations is perhaps the only document of its kind ever made. It is the private thoughts of the world’s most powerful man giving advice to himself on how to make good on the responsibilities and obligations of his positions. Trained in Stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius stopped almost every night to practice a series of spiritual exercises—reminders designed to make him humble, patient, empathetic, generous, and strong in the face of whatever he was dealing with.Today, Ryan breaks down 100 applicable life lessons from his years of reading and studying Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  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, including the new premium leatherbound edition of Meditations (Gregory Hays translation).📱 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, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives.

But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. It was the fall of 2006 and a package came to my apartment in Riverside, California, so actually living in Grandmark on Iowa Avenue. And in fact, I actually had posted about this recently on Instagram and someone posted that they were probably working the front desk when that book came in, because they also went to UCR, which is a credible full circle moment, that was all the more full circle because I was downstairs at the Panty Port Chester Day signing a copy of the leather edition of Meditations to give to Professor Gregory

Hayes the translator of that book that had arrived from Amazon. I don't know why I picked that one. I typed in a Marx-relious meditations on Amazon. That's the one that popped up. It was Marcus on a horse, pardoning the Germanic tribes, the famous Equestrian Statue photo. Now that addition in paperback has a bird on it. That's the one we sell at the Pena Porch. And then the leather edition that we do in Daily Stoic is Marcus' face. But that moment

changed my life. And that's what I wrote to Professor Hayes. I said, Professor Hayes, you changed my life. Thank you. Because I think it's the most beautiful translation of meditation. I've read all the other ones you heard my interview with Robin Waterfield where we talk about his annotated edition. I've read the pen and classics edition. I've read the really old editions. It's one of the most incredible books ever written. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode.

It's a long one. I know. It's 100 lessons from Marcus Aurelius' meditations. This is a solo episode with me. It's 100is' meditations. This is a solo episode of me. It's a hundred lessons from meditations from my more than 100 readings of that book. We're gonna do a deep dive into one of the greatest books ever written, the book that changed my life,

that set in motion all the events that brought us together today to even be recording this podcast, to have you listen into my voice. I don't know, it's a beautiful little moment. I feel very blessed. The Stokes would say it was faded. Marcus' life was changed by Ruskets giving him a patitis. My life was changed much more, much more mundanely by Amazon suggesting algorithmically this addition

for Gregory Hayes doing this beautiful job translating it. And I want to give you 100 lessons, some deep dives from me into what makes meditation, such a powerful book, what it can teach us. And I think you're really going to like it. If you want to check out this new edition, it's incredible. It's what I now have next to my bedside and I've been going back through. It's actually been nice to have a fresh copy because I've put so many miles on my old one. If you want that edition, it makes a great gift.

You can check that out at dailystoic.com slash meditations or just check it out in the daily stoke store. And of course, we have them at the painted porch. I'll thank Professor Hayes again for his beautiful, lyrical, magisterial translation of Marcus, which I think brings it to life the way that no other translator has before or since and I would love to have him on the podcast but he's shy and has not consented to Despite many requests. I hope one day to have him on in the meantime

Here's 100 lessons that I learned from his translation and all the translations from Marcus releases meditations and Grab your edition of the new one dailystoward.com slash meditations. One of the most compelling and jaw-dropping parts of meditations comes at really the beginning, the opening of book two, but book one is that's in lessons. I'll talk more about that later. He says, today the people you will meet will be jealous and stupid and annoying and frustrating. He lists all the things that people are going to be like today. And part of this is just a stoic idea of being prepared,

right? The unexpected blowlands, heaviest. If you think people are gonna be amazing and kind and get out of your way and you're gonna only hit green lights, you're gonna be sorely disappointed. But he says the point is not to think about how shitty and awful people are, to be amazing and kind and get out of your way and you're going to only hit green lights, you're going to be sorely disappointed. But he says the point is not to think about how shitty and awful people are. Not at all. You have to realize why they are like this.

He says it's because they don't know good from bad. They don't have the same training as you, but they are still like you. He said you cannot allow them to implicate you in their ugliness. He says we were meant to work together. We are brothers and sisters. And so what meditation begins with this seemingly depressive note. But if you stick with it, and I think this is such an important lesson that you get from reading Marcus over and over again, if you stick with him, you realize that beneath this honesty, this bluntness, this matter of factness is a huge caring heart, a heart that will

not allow itself to harden or be turned against other people. In one passage in Meditations, Mark Serely's writes down what he calls epithets for the self. He talks about being honest, talks about being upright. These are words he says that he can live by. A couple different times in my life I've tried to do that. Part of one of the daily stoke challenges a few years ago, I wrote down seven of them. I wrote honest, calm, fair, father, brave, generous, and still. These are words that I try to live by. I want to make decisions, take actions that will demonstrate that idea, which will show that

those are the watch words or the epithets that I live by, that I could be described by. And so I think of all the exercises and meditation, that's one that we can all practice, is just come up with the epithets for the self, the rules, the descriptors for your character that you want to live and model day in and day out. But really the true opening of meditations is the deaths and lessons section.

Almost a full 10% of the book is Marcus really is writing what he learned from and what he was grateful for and the people who trained and the people who raised and the fact that 10% of the book is is gratitude to me is so important It's a statement of priorities and the role the gratitude must play in our life Nothing is so inspiring is remembering the values and virtues Seeing them embodied in the people around you. He never knew meditations would be published. This wasn't for the other people to see that he was grateful to them.

It was actually the act of expressing the gratitude that was a gift to him. And we have to have an active gratitude practice in our own lives. One of my favorite stories about Marx and Rios is not in meditations, but at the depth of the Antonin plague, he sells off the palace furnishings to pay down on Rome's debts, which actually does connect to something in the meditations. He talks about how lucky he feels that he's never had to ask anyone else for financial help,

and whenever anyone else came to him asking for financial help, he was always in a position to say yes. He was a generous, a kind person. Yes, he was privileged and wealthy and powerful. He tried to use those things for good. He tried to absorb the blows or the pain or the difficulties before other people. This is a print I have from one of my favorite passages from Mark's Reelys. I have it on the wall, I've sat in the dentist's door, he says, ways no more time arguing what a good man should be. And I think arguably Mark's really his greatest contributions to philosophy or not what he wrote in this book, right?

What Mark is his greatest contributions to philosophy is how he lived. That even if he had never written a philosophical work, but he'd still be seen as a kind of philosopher king because he embodied the ideas. He lived them. He demonstrated that a king and emperor, a person of power, influence, or wealth could be good and decent, could do the right thing, could be

everything that people expected of him. And that's just to me the most important thing we can take from Mark's realist. Marcus really says that no matter what's happening in the world, no matter what other people are doing to us, we always have this superpower. We always have the power to have no opinion. We don't have to decide that it's good or bad. We don't have to decide that it's urgent or not. We don't have to decide anything about it out. We don't have to think anything about it at all.

You can just let it go, you can let it pass by. You don't have to figure it out. You don't have to have a hot take on it. Just let the weather be the weather. This political situation, be that political situation, doesn't have to be good or bad. We don't have to have a hot take on it. Just let the weather be the weather. This political situation, be that political situation, doesn't have to be good or bad. We don't have to have an opinion about everything. One of my first reads of meditations,

I noted that Marcus says, can only ruin your life, it ruins your character. The idea that success wasn't whether you made money, whether you got what you wanted, whether you protected your character, right? Jesus says, what good is gaining the whole world if you lose your soul? And we can imagine Mark is struggling with this

as the emperor of Rome. It doesn't matter how many buildings he builds or what lands he conquers, to him it matters if he isn't a good person or not. I remember shortly after I read Meditation this was the first time I had to get on a flight. I was in a middle seat on this long cross country flight and I was next to someone who was jostling for the arm rest,

the person in front of me reclined back. I was just one of those unpleasant experiences in modern travel. But I thought back to one of my favorite passages and meditations where Marcus talks about being next to a smelly person. He says, yeah, it's awful. You can say something to them if you want. But if you're not going to say something that you just have to bear it, no amount of gritting your teeth or silently resenting them is going to change this. Stoing doesn't help them or you. Being miserable doesn't help them.

You're just going to carry this nastyness with you when you go. And so I think Marcus would have dealt with the same kinds of inconveniences and annoyances as all of us, even if his life was more shelter than most of us. But he reminded himself that this is what life entails. He either say something about it, or you gotta get comfortable putting up with it. One of Mark's really is his most brilliant rhetorical questions is this.

He says, is a world without shameless people possible? The answer is of course, no. And he says, okay, so you met one of them, right? This person that you meet, they're one of those people. You know that it's impossible for the world to exist without them. You know inevitably, statistically, you will run into one of them. That's it. He says, reminding yourself that this person is one of a certain number helps you not get so upset about it, not be so surprised by it.

And most of all, not despair by it. Most people are the opposite of that person. And I think for the word shameless, we can plug in all sorts of things. People who live, people who steal, people who cheat, people who do all the things that we don't like. A certain percentage of them are always going to exist and always have existed. And better yet, when we remind ourselves still that they are the minority, we can find a way to categorize them, accept them, and then move on. A couple of years ago, I wrote this book, Conspiracy.

Peter Tio was out at his gay by this sort of Silicon Valley gossip bragging that treated him very cool. He spent millions of dollars in years of his life, plotting and scheming to destroy it, which he successfully did. And there's a lot that was really interesting in it, a lot that was really innovative in doing that. I think even some things to be impressed by it as I was talking about in the book. Every day as I was writing it I couldn't help a think of one of my favorite lines from meditations. Marcus really says, in the best revenge is to not be like your enemy. The point is that getting even often makes you like or worse and the person who supposedly did this grievous heinous thing to you. We see this in Mark's real life, he's betrayed by one of his most trusted generals and he tries not to be angry about it.

He has to deal with it, yes, but he tries to actually use it as an opportunity to show the Roman people how one deals with being betrayed, how one deals with civil striped. You can't let the person who wronged you turn you into something just like that. Gregory Hayes and his translation of meditations, he makes a great point and I missed it at the first couple of times. He says that nowhere does Marcus identify as a stoic. And he says actually if you asked Marcus, he probably wouldn't have identified with any school at all, even though meditations is of course filled with all sorts of stoic observations and principles. He says that Marcus would have identified as a philosopher.

Paul Graham in one of his famous essays is Keep Your Identity Small. Don't identify as a singular thing or with a singular ideology. You want to be a free agent. This is why Seneca quotes so much from Epicurus. He bred widely, he understood widely. The point is not to be a stoic philosopher.

The point is to be a philosopher in Lover of wisdom. There's a beautiful line in Joseph Brodsky's essay about the question in Statue of Marks, Realies and Rome. It dates back to Marcus's time, but the base of which was redesigned by Michelangelo. Brodsky says something like, if Marcus are really his antiquity, it is we who are the ruins. I don't know what that means exactly. There's something beautiful and haunting about it. Maybe it's this idea that when you read meditations, you can't help but be struck by classical beauty and perfection

in some ways the highest expression of human greatness. And then you look at us, you look at the way we talk to each other, you look at the things we say, you look at how we live and act and think. And you go, yeah, we're the old worn out, beaten down, falling apart things. say, look at how we live and act and think. And you go, yeah, we're the old worn out, beaten down, falling apart things. The ancient world feels fresh and modern and new and perfect in so many ways. And I just love that idea. If Marcus Aurelius is antiquity, it is we who are the ruins. It's actually in book six that I found the meditation that I

would build my own first book of stoke philosophy around the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way it becomes the way. He says, look, stuff can get in the way you can be impeded. He says, but nothing can impede your intentions or your dispositions. He says, the mind can convert to its own purposes, the obstacle to our acting. That's the power of Stosis and that we always have the opportunity to practice a virtue. We don't choose where we are. we don't choose what's happening, but if you accept the obstacle and work with what you're given, Mark Srio says in Meditations, an alternative will present itself. Another piece of what you're trying to assemble, action by action, acceptance can seem

like this weakness that it's stopping you from moving forward. In fact, acceptance means this door is closed. Now I can go try this other door. You first have to accept that the obstacle exists, that it is real that it has constraints or impediments or difficulties to then decide what you're gonna do about it. You're gonna go around, you're gonna go over,

you're gonna use the weight of it against itself. It's an opportunity to do this. Other than you couldn't have done on ordinary circumstances. Acceptance is not passive resignation. It's the first step in taking an active approach. And Marcus returns to this theme over and over and over again in meditations. In one passage, he says, a strong stomach digest what it eats.

A fire turns what you throw on top of it into flame, in brightness, and heat. His point is we can use our obstacles as fuel. The things that happen to us in life are opportunities. This is the essence of stoicism. This is our chance, whatever it is. It might not be the virtue we wanted to practice. It might not be the virtue we're most comfortable practicing, but it's never the less an opportunity to be great. I remember I was once talking to the great Robert Green and I asked him what one of his favorite passages for Marx's really his meditations was. He said it was the one where Marx's really is talking about, he's looking at this big

feast and he says, oh that's a dead bird. He said, oh that's dead pig. Oh this wine is rotted grapes. I said, Robert why did you like that? And he said, that's what I try to do in my writing. I try to deconstruct things, to take away the preconceived notions. Essentially what Marcus says, he says, it's about stripping the things of the legend that encrust them, about seeing them as they actually are. I think that's not only what a philosopher has to do, but I think that's what a great writer like Robert

Green does. I call this contemptuous expression. These things things kind of loom over us, we go, oh Harvard is so important. Look at the fancy people that go there, look how hard it is, look how expensive it is. But also you could look at the idiots who've graduated from Harvard. The monsters that have come out of there, right? You could be like, oh the president's the most prestigious important job in the world. But look at some of the people who have been president. Look how incompetent they were. You're supposed to see things for what they are. Strip them of the legend that encrust them, see them as they are.

The same goes for like some fancy car, some important position. It's not what people think it is. You have to strip it, bear, you have to see it for what it is. And Marcus really was doing this. Even with his own purple cloak, the thing that signified he was the emperor,

he said, this is just a regular cloak died with shellfish blood. You've seen it as it actually was, which is such a critical practice. The famous dictum from Lord Ackham is that power corrupts. An absolute power corrupts absolutely. What's remarkable about Marcus Aurelis is that he's perhaps the only exception

to this rule that we know. He's given absolute power. Where's the first thing he does with it? He gives half of it away to his step-brother. He isn't corrupted by it. It's a remarkable testament to the power of this philosophy, the idea of what stoicism can make a person and that's not an accident. In meditation, Marcus Aurelius warns himself against being That's not an accident. In Meditations, Marcus really warns himself against being caesorified, of being died purple, of being changed by the power

and fame and money that the position has given him. And we all have to be worried about being caesorified or died purple. We have to be worried about being changed by the number of followers that we have, by the promotion that we just got, by the number of followers that we have, by the promotion that we just got, by the famous name that we inherited. You're not special. The rules do apply to you. You're not better than anyone else.

Power doesn't have to corrupt what it can do is reveal who you actually are. In one point of Meditation, the Marxist Realist tells himself to take Plato's view, to zoom out, to see things from above. And he does that. He talks about how enormous armies fighting over a border, a whole country could be not that dissimilar from afar and a view to ants fighting over piece of food on the ground.

It's beautiful and quite impressive that he could come to this point of view. Because in Mark's time, the highest he could have gotten off the ground was like a couple of story building or maybe the top of a mountain. He didn't have the access to an airplane, like all of us do. He would have never seen the blue marble photo which showed Earth from space, but when you get to Plato's view, you're just reminded how inconsequential most of the things we

get upset about are. And then you are also reminded of how interconnected and interdependent and together we all are. Marcus says this too that the borders don't matter that fast oceans don't matter we're all in the same thing together that we are tied together more than we'd like to think that we are. Pierre Hadoe, one of the great scholars of Marx's Relays talks about the oceanic feeling. Marx really talks about the view from above. He talks about a men's city, how all of experience gapes before his.

Mark is trying to meditate on the vastness and the connectedness of everything in the world. He talks about looking at the stars and watching yourself alongside them. I think he's seeking out these kind of humbling experiences. And you could think about why that would be so important to someone who was literally the center of the universe. He wanted to remind himself that that wasn't strictly true.

One of the things Marcus really does say in meditations about the people who would have always been flattering him and telling him, he's amazing, or people who would have been criticizing him or attacking him is just think about what they just submitted to a few minutes ago. Think about what they do in private. Think about who they actually are. And when you know who they actually are, how weak they are, or how corrupted they

are, petty they are, suddenly they're approval. Their opinion about you won't matter very much. Markets are really as clearly hated, all the flatters and sick offends. But the thing he hated most was the people who would say things in passing like, I'm going to be honest with you. Let me be straight with you. Let me tell you what I really think. He said to say those things was actually a confession, a self-inditement. You're admitting that that's not the norm, that's not what you normally do. People should know you're going to be honest. He said, an honest person should be like the smelly goat in the room. You should know they're there the second they walk in. And nobody had to think that about Marcus. In fact, from an early age Marcus really

was named Verismus, or the truest one. And we think that's because he was so unflinchingly truthful with Hadrian, his adopted grandfather, in fact. The most powerful man in Rome, Marcus just told them what he thought. He didn't hold back. And neither can you. It's clear that one of Marcus really says passions is the theater. He loves the theater. And we know this because he quotes so widely from place, some of those plays didn't even survive.

The only surviving remnants of them are his quotes and meditations. But he would talk about going to the theater watching a tragedy and what this can teach us about light. He even talks about looking at your own life as a kind of play. He says if watching something in the theater would make you interested or make you laugh,

make you think, it can't make you angry in life when it happens to you. You have to cultivate this same kind of philosophical approach. Today, people might think, oh, philosophies, this intellectual pursuit, it can't possibly jive with theater or watching television, following sports, of course it can't. Marcus Realis was drawn from the popular art forms

of his time and drawing philosophical lessons from them that he used to be better at his light, which is the purpose of all art. Speaking of the world, art can have in teaching us things, or popular culture can have in teaching us things. you consider probably the most popular, dramatic, or rendering of Marcus is in the movie gladiator. He's the old guy at the beginning of the movie that Joaquin Phoenix is character killed.

Now this is a movie explicitly based on stoses and all the time you see on the internet quotes from the movie attributed to Marcus that are really only in the movie and not real. But the movie does capture quite shockingly the evil and the awfulness of Communists. And that question has to hover over your readings of meditations. How can such a wise and decent and patient and philosophical person have raised such a terrible kid?

It's a tricky question, and I don't have a good answer. We've talked about it before on Daily Still. I mean, almost all of Mark Cerelea's children die. Communists is his only remaining male heir. You know, maybe Communists is just a psychopath and it doesn't say anything about Mark's. Maybe Mark's was trapped by the traditions of his time and to Nineness, Hadrian, and the preceding emperors.

They didn't have a male son. So there was an issue, but it is a tricky question. And I think the overall lesson we take from this is just talking about these things, just thinking about these things. It doesn't mean you're going to be good at this really difficult thing that is raising children. That should humble us. And also, I think even make us question some of the things that we see Mark's really talk about in meditations. Steve Jobs learned from his father who was a carpenter, the important.

So caring about the craft, how something was done, even the parts that no one would see, like the back of the fence or the back of a drawer. That's why the inside of a MacBook computer is beautiful, even though the average user will never crack it open and see. Again, meditation is being a book for the author, not for the reader, is so fascinating. Marcus really says writing in Greek, not in Latin, because at that time Greek was the language of philosophy. It was a harder but a more beautiful language. He quotes from memory perfectly these, uh, scarer passages from philosophy. He makes these observations about the way that grain, bends, or, uh, the flex of foam on a boris mouth. He was a beautiful writer. It was beautiful just for himself. I mean, that's one of the reasons I slaved over this edition.

I just wanted it to be amazing and beautiful, to reflect the workmanship and the craftsmanship of meditations itself. And I just always think of that lesson from Marcus and from Steve Jobsett. Doesn't matter whether other people will see it, whether it's in your journal or for publication, you have to care about what it is and how it's made. We never step in the same river twice. The river changes and we change, right?

When you pick up a book for the first time, then a second time and a third time, maybe even the hundredth time, each time you get something different out of it. I think so often we get a book and we get one so we go, I got it, right? But that's not how it works. Stoicism is this topic, you're supposed to return to over and over and over again. I put a lot of miles on my copies and meditations over the years, covers falling off, there's different highlighters and pens folded,

like almost every page at this point, as I've returned to these passages so many times, like now almost everything in it's marked up. So one of the things I've been doing recently is rereading it on a fresh copy. And I have a really special fresh copy. This is my leather bound edition that I actually had made,

which you can buy at dailystoke.com slash meditations. I'm returning to meditations now with fresh eyes. You can see all the notes that I have in here. All these things have been hitting me in a new place, in a new way, because the book is famous, the same translation, but the format's a little bit different the font size is a little bit different the moment in time is different my experiences are different the lessons are the

same but the lessons that I need are different so meditations has to be a book that you return to over and over again one you can't be satisfied just getting the gist up it has to be a daily practice and ongoing practice something you return to over and over and over again This new one the the leatherbound edition. I think it could last you your whole life. I'm really proud of this It's it's so awesome and from the back it has I think a wonderful encapsulation of meditations marks This is concentrate on what you have to do fix your eyes on Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being. Remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it without hesitation.

Speak the truth as you see it, but with kindness, with humility, without hypocrisy. That's the journey I think meditations is trying to get us all towards. One that each time we pick up the book, we get a little bit closer towards. I'm really proud of this. You can check it out. It's got awesome new illustrations on each of the 12 books. It's got guilt-edge pages. It's high-quality leather. Marcus's face on the front. I think you're really going to like this. And then at the back I wrote a biography of Marcus that I think everyone should read. To check out the new book, dailystoward.com slash meditations or get it anywhere books

are sold including my bookstore, the Payton Porch. 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 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,

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I have the print, I have this bust of him. This is a bust I have from Marcus, really, is from the 1840s. I have a painting of Marcus that someone did for me. When Marcus says at the beginning of meditations that nothing is so inspiring as seeing the virtues embodied in the people around us. I think this is also true in how you decorate your space,

your house, your office, whatever. Find philosophical embodiments of these ideas, things that remind you when I look at those things, it's just this little sort of subconscious reminder who I wanna be, how I wanna live. I'm looking at the virtues being embodied around me and that keeps me on the straight and narrow. In writing the daily story, I got to parse

the exact word choice of Marcus in ways that I probably ordinarily wouldn't have. One of the passages that really struck me the first time I read Meditations or what he says, how trivial the things we want so passionately are. And I don't know I guess I was struck by like the idea that we want so passionately are. I thought that was a beautiful expression. It was actually in the midst of translating it and seeing it from a different

perspective. I realized he's saying how trivial the things we want so badly are. I think there's something to be said about reading and rereading where almost like a Talmudic scholar you're debating what is this word mean or that mean or what about this or what about this meaning. There just is something about diving super deep. Sometimes the superficial, the first take you take is the one that hits you and sometimes it's the 50th take where you finally get it or you get it on a level that you wouldn't have gotten before. I remember when you're translating Marx really Realist for Daily Stoke, there's a passage where Marx realizes, stop your whining, stop this miserable whining monkey life. I remember our editor said, a monkey, and around, is this expression Marx could have possibly

used, but Marx's realist have even seen or known what a monkey was? And it turns out, yes, in fact, comment has probably killed one in the Colosseumus with psychopathic. Just the more you play and dig into the language, the more you understand. And this is why reading and rereading is so important. You just never know. Behind every word, behind every word, choice, it's like a whole other room to explore. It would have been my third or fourth reading of Marcus Realis that I caught this line

and says, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. This is the stoic idea of momentum. It's not that you will die tomorrow and you should try heroin or go to an orgy. It's that you never know when life is going to end. And so you can't take it for granted. You cannot take it for granted. Another one that I didn't get at first,

Marcus Realis is saying to avoid imperialization. He says that indelible stain And I didn't really know what he meant by imperialization and that's when I saw it in another translation I realized what he's talking about is imperialization like the imperial system of Rome He means to not be Cesarified to not be corrupted by his position So I think sometimes it's just where you are. You don't know what a certain word means or just the intonation that you're reading about it,

it doesn't hit you in the right way. And this is why you have to come back to things, why you can't just be satisfied with getting the gist of something, you have to return to it over and over again, because you get it in a new way. It also is why, as much as I've loved the Hayes translation, and why we have this edition, it's why I've loved the Hayes translation and why we have this edition, it's why I've read the other translations.

It's why I like the Robin Waterfield annotated version because he's bringing his perspective. He's breaking down what he sees and in each time you do that, you get something new. In Meditations, Marcus really says, we have to be more like a boxer or a wrestler than a dancer. He says, we have to be dug in and ready for sudden attacks.

You know, he saw life as a battle. He saw fate as being indifferent to us, but also dealing serious blows to us. And if you're not ready for it, if you think life is a dance, if you think life is fun, if you think everything's gonna be all right, then man, fortune has some real surprises in store for you. And if you look at Marcus' life, that was true. One thing after another, he was ready for it. He was dug in. He was ready for those sudden attacks, and you and I have to be also. At one point in Meditations, Marcus really says, avoid false friendship at all costs. Says nothing is more painful, nothing is worse. And he knows this from experience. I tell an obstacle is the way. The story of Marcus being betrayed by a videos Cassius, his most trusted general, one of his best friends. He declares himself

Emperor essentially attempts to orchestrate a coup. Marcus really is new that although we wanted to be trusting people, although we wanted to assume the best in people, we had to understand that people were not perfect. People could be led astray, people could have evil intentions in their heart. We have to be aware of this, we have to be prepared for it. One of my favorite lines in meditation says to accept it without arrogance to let it go within difference. Good things happen, we get awards, we succeed, we make money, awesome, but that doesn't say anything about you as a person. We fail, we fall short, we get criticized. Great, that doesn't say anything about you as a person. Another translation that says, receive without pride, let go without attachment.

Sort of even keel, not being affected, not getting too high or too low, not identifying with any of it, but identifying solely with your character. Marcus really has tried to do good. He tried to help as many people, but he also understood that doing the right thing, doing good things, it wasn't always gonna be recognized

and it wasn't always gonna be appreciated. He says in meditations that you can't expect the third thing, being recognized, being appreciated, being thanked for what happened. You already got the thanks, he said, by doing the right thing, by feeling, by knowing that it was the right thing, everything else the stokes would say is extra,

nice to have, but it can't be why you do it. And I think often of this idea of doing the third thing. Third thing is wanting to hit the best cellulose. The third thing is wanting the thank you card. The third thing is the person comes into you and saying, I just want to let you know what that meant to me, how much it helped me. I want to pay you back.

No, you do it because it was the right thing. If you get the third thing, if you get the extra, that's great. For the Stoics, that shouldn't be something you want, but most of all, it can't be something you expect because it will be disappointed. In book 12 of Meditations, Marks really says, it never ceases to amaze me. We love ourselves more than other people, yet we care about their opinions more than our own. I thought about this when I first book of Stoke Foss became out. I had worked really hard on it. I knew how many copies it sold. I knew what it deserved.

And there it was, not on the best solo list. It got skunked for some inexplicable reason. And I had to remind myself, my judgment of the book is what counts. My opinion is what matters here. So often that's what we do. We like a shirt or we like a show or we like this or we like where we live. And then other people say, well that's not cool or that's strange or that's weird or it's incorrect for the following reasons.

And we give up our own internal sense of what we like or dislike what's right or wrong to do what everyone else is doing. Sanity is time your success to what you say and do. This is insanity. It's time it to what other people say and do. So to me this is one of the most powerful lessons of Marcus that even the emperor of Rome was struggling with it I think shows how difficult it is to maintain that inner scorecard that inner compass when everyone around you is thinking or saying something differently than you. It would be a mistake to see Marcus are really as perfect. He wasn't perfect because no one is perfect. He's a human being. Marcus instead was trying to get better, always. Meditations was Marcus is really writing notes to himself.

When Marcus really is warrants against having a temper or being afraid of death or being ambitious or any of the things that he talks about, he's not lecturing you, he's lecturing him. Probably because he just lost his temper, probably because he struggled with that. So you don't want to see Marcus as perfect. You want to see Marcus as a fellow human being striving to be care best just as you and I are striving to be our best. Bill Bellichek, maybe the greatest football coach in history tells his players, do your job. For Marcus to realize what is that? What is your job? Marcus really asks himself that same question in

the meditation. He says, what is my vocation? This is to be a good person. That's the job. At the end of the day, to be a good person, to do good things, to make a positive difference in the world for yourself and the people around you. In book 537, Mark's Releases, I was a fortunate man, but at some point fortunate band in me. We can imagine Mark is saying this after the plague, after he's bearing another child maybe after he hears again that perhaps his wife is cheating on him, maybe his health has failed him again and he catches himself again. This is what he's doing in meditations. He's constantly catching himself. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune he says is good character, good intentions and good actions. And I just I love that idea so much right. It

wasn't what was happening to him. In the outside fortune wasn't this external thing. Good fortune feeling good being good. This was something that was up to him that was inside him and the choices that he made and the actions that he took. I was saying before that one of the things Marcus does in meditations is he quotes from playwrights or bits of lines from the theater that particularly struck him. One of my favorites, this is a lost line from the poet Euripides, he says, and why should we be angry at the world as if the world would notice? We don't know what this play is from, we don't know the larger context,

but it's such a great stoic line, getting angry, being pissed off, being resentful, being bitter. The world doesn't care. It is indifferent to you and I. All we can try to do this to say is maintain that goodness, preserve our character, focus on how we respond. One thing work is, doesn't talk a lot about in meditations as happiness,

or joy, but I think that goes back to the idea that he wasn't talking about things he didn't need help with. He's not having to remind himself that jokes are funny, that sex feels good. In fact, he's minding himself the opposite, that sex might feel good in the moment, but it can cause regrets, complications, or problems later on. He's reminding himself of the things that he needs the most help with. Nice fancy bed is better than a hard, uncomfortable one. He doesn't need a reminder of that. Right? So, meditation's as Marcus really is talking about the things that are important, but we

should not take that omission as meaning anything more than that. The Stoics were happy, the Stoics had joy, the Stoics love, and we know Marcus did these things. Stoics were just like us. Marcus had some sense of what human flourishing or happiness was, such as not what he was talking the most about in meditations. I think the passage that hit me most for meditations is book five. Mark really talks about struggling to get out of bed in the morning. He's just

like you and I and he's saying, but it's so nice here under the covers and he says, but are you meant to feel nice, to huddle under the covers and be warm? No, he said, you are meant to do the work of a human being. You gotta get up and you gotta get after it. And when I read that in college for the first time, it hit me so much, I taped it up in my wall. I've been thinking about it ever since. My friend Stephen Presfield talks about the resistance, the thing that gets in between us and what we want to do. He says, nobody says I'm never going to write my symphony. He says, I'm going to do it tomorrow. The march really struggles with the resistance too, like all of us. He says, you could be good today,

instead you choose tomorrow. we put it up. And actually, Seneca says something similar, he says, the one thing fools all have in common is that they're always getting ready to begin. The point for Marcus was that you do it now, not later, you do it now. The Stoics believed in this idea of sympathy, that there was this whole, this collective we're in. Mark Sierrius talks about the common good, dozens and dozens of times in meditation. He believed that, yeah, he was a Roman and yes, he was the head of the Roman Empire, but all human beings were connected, that all human beings shared an affinity, and a relationship,

and an obligation to each other. In book 654, he says, what injures the hive, injures the bee. What's bad for the hive is bad for the bee, What's bad for the bee is bad for the hive. And this was a time of such immense cruelty and selfishness and indifference to what was happening elsewhere. The Marcus Realista saying, no, your job as a human being is to care about other human beings, not just the ones immediately nearest to you or related to you,

but ones you'll never know, ones you'll never meet, ones who have never even been born. Stilicism does not make you a sociopath. If anything, it makes you care more about more people. We don't know a lot about the policies that Marcus in acts. We know of a couple. One, he passes a law that makes life easier for slaves

and protections for them. And then another, he demands that the gladiators be given wooden swords to practice and fight with, take a very dangerous fatal sport to make it not so dangerous. I like this idea of stoicism being at least in part about standing up for the little guy. One of the things he learns from the stoics is this idea of a society of equals, of equal laws, of a ruler who protects the rights of their subjects. I just love the idea that Mark's talking about that

in theory and then he is in a position to do something about it and he does. Not enough, none of us do enough. That's a reminder there too. He reads Epic Titus, he sees the brilliance of this slave who becomes a philosopher. And yeah, he makes the life easier for slaves, but he never questions the institution of slavery itself.

But I do generally like the idea that Marcus did his best to practice what he preached. In book five, Marcus Lewis talks about the proper role of philosophy in life. He says it's not as your instructor. He says it's as kind of medicine and ointment. He describes this sort of ancient remedy for this eye illness

where they would crack an egg on you or something like that. I think his general point, he actually is taking from Epictetus who said, like, you shouldn't leave my philosophy class feeling good. You should feel like you just came out of the hospital. He says, because you weren't well when you entered. The point of philosophy is to challenge you. It's to make you uncomfortable.

It's to fix the illnesses of the soul of the mind, even though there are passages of meditations that are soothing and reassuring. A lot of them are jarring, a lot of them make you uncomfortable, a lot of them really make you think or a lot of them maybe you instinctively disagree, that's the point. Philosophy is not supposed to be your instructor, it's supposed to be a kind of medicine. Philosophy can feel like this impractical, inaccessible thing, but Mark Sures writes in meditations, this is no role is so well-suited to philosophy

as the one you're in right now. He says, it stares you in the face. And of course, he's talking to himself, of course, he's talking about being emperor, but if it stares the emperor in the face, that no role was so well-suited to being philosophical, as that, I think it's also true for being a janitor for being a stay-at-home parent and being an astronaut Whatever it is that you do stares you in the face. Nothing is so well suited to what you're doing as this

Philosophy in book six thirteen markis this pride is the master of deception When you think you're occupied in the waitiest business, that's when he has you in his spell. There's a quote from the philosopher Bertrand Russell who was not a fan of the Stokes, but he said, the first sign of an impending nervous collapse is the belief that your work is terribly, terribly important. It's again a very humbling idea.

Yes, Mark's really, his work was important. Yes, he wanted to do a good job at whatever he was doing, but it was just a reminder of how insidious ego is, how self-important we often feel, and how easily we get distracted again with the inessential things, the things that validate us, that make us feel special, but it end don't matter at all. Years ago, a friend sent me an email,

came in in the afternoon, or really evening on a Friday, opened it, and I was like, you know what, this is like a lot to deal with here, and I marked it as unread, and I said, I'll get to it on Monday. And he dropped dead on a hike on Sunday. This is what the Stoics are talking about when they say, you know, momento morning,

and you can leave life right now. And one of the most haunting passages in Marcus Real is, he talks about how as you tuck your child in at night, says you should say to yourself, they will not make it to the morning. His point was meditating on the fact that this could be the last email that you get from this friend. This could be the last time you sit down to coffee, it could be the last family vacation that you ever go on. For you or for them, right? And that we can't take people or places for granted. I don't think Marcus

is doing this exercise meditating on the loss of his child to Disconnect a detach from them the opposite. It's to connect more deeply with them to remind himself What was truly important, which was the present moment and his other brilliant meditation on the Femarality of life. He says you're afraid of death because you won't be able to do this anymore You won't be able to wait in line at the DMV won't be on another stupid pointless conference call So much of what we spend our life doing is a complete waste and then we say we're afraid of death We say we feel like we don't have enough time. You do have enough time You just have to stop wasting it. I was talking to someone recently who had this high-flying business It was super successful out of nowhere made all of money, that all sorts of wonderful public attention

and then it turned, the business failed and suddenly they weren't held up as this business success but as an example of a business failure and I told them one of my favorite passages from Marcus Reales, Marcus Reales says, we're like a rock tossed in the air. We gain nothing by going up and lose nothing by coming down.

None of this says anything about us as people. He didn't gain anything by being made emperor. He wouldn't have lost by losing it. None of it Marx really says, it means anything about us as people. Even though Marx really says we must avoid false friendship at all costs, even though he's betrayed by his trusted general of videos Cassius, we know that Marx doesn't harden his heart, he doesn't close himself off from the world. He's ready, as Michael Scott says, he's ready to be heard again, right? He constantly is putting himself back out there, but he does learn from this. He's a little more guarded going forward. He makes this analogy in meditation. He says, you know, you're in the boxing ring and someone's cheating. Maybe they're gouging, fighting, or scratching. He says, you don't quit altogether,

you just change your fight plan accordingly. This is one passage that Robert Green quotes from meditations quite often. You don't quit, you don't storm and go home, but you are aware of who you're dealing with and you adjust accordingly. The short lines in meditations are the best. Disgarde your misperception,

stop being jerked around like a puppet. Limit yourself to the present. They're just a couple of words they say so much and they cut through so much space and time. He never uses two words, more one will do. He doesn't beat around the bush, he just comes out and says it and the advice is so clear and so obvious.

Try to imagine the Emperor of Rome, this man of enormous power and wealth and prestige. Trying to tell himself not to be a person if too many words or too many deeds. Pretty remarkable. That he's even at that level talking about simplification. He's talking about modesty, talking about restraint. It's a beautiful thing and a very rare thing, for sure.

In Meditations, Mark Sturellis is constantly pointing out how few people remember the emperors who came before him. Who remembers the name of Vespasian? Who remembers this person from Hadrian's Corridor? That one. All these names are forgotten. But he's saying this to remind himself

that one day the name Markus Arelius will sound unfamiliar. Indeed, for hundreds of years, it was. I mean, how many people even watching this video know much more about Marcus Aurelius than he was the old guy in the movie gladiator, right? Even the most famous person in the world, the person that carved statues out of stone. His name was emblazoned on building so few people know of him today, and that should be a humbling reminder for all of us.

In Gregory Hayes' introduction of meditations, he says, there's an American president who rereads Marcus Aureli's every single year. Some research turned up. He was talking then about President Bill Clinton. Now, obviously Bill Clinton did not get truly the message of meditations, but I think the point is how much better off would we be if every leader, every person in a position of power was familiar with Marcus

Arelias because he was there. He had that job. He had that job times a thousand and he knew what you had to strive to do. He knew what you had to try your hardest not to do. He knew what you had to be to be great. And I think it's important that it's not just reading it once again, it's the idea of rereading it every year. So not just, hey, it's not just reading it once again, the idea of re-reading it every year. So not just, hey, wouldn't it be nice if every president, if every world leader read and re-read meditations every year, we don't control that. If you re-read it every year, what would you learn, what would you take out of it each and every time?

I know that I've taken something new out of it each time I've picked up this book, as I have now for almost 15 years. Every time you dip into markets, you take something new out of it each time I've picked up this book. As I have now for almost 15 years, every time you dip into Marcus, you take something new out of it. And that's why Bill Clinton was rereading it every year and that's why every leader, every parent, every person should do the same. I have some really old copies of meditations to the people that have given me.

Some of the so old, the covers are falling off. I'm even scared to pull the pages apart or hundreds, hundreds of years old. And I think one stoic exercise, you could almost imagine, Marcus doing it, and I think about it now even when I hold my new-ish copies versus my oldest copies. And think about who the person was that held this book a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago. Think about the translation that this translation is a translation of, is a translation of, is a translation of, is a translation of. And you start to get far back pretty fast

and you wonder where those people are. They're gone, they're gone forever, just as someday we'll be gone forever. And maybe someone will get your used copy at a library sale or at the garage sale or it'll be passed down your kids, their kids, their kids. None of us are here forever. And in a lot of different places in meditations,

Marcus meditates on how these old familiar names are no longer so familiar in these people who were once powerful and super well-known. Nobody knows who they are. Think about all the famous people that have owned meditations. They're nowhere. As you and I will someday be. The one prophecy that never fails, as they say. And Marcus knows that for all his power, for all his fame, for all his brilliance, he's not an exception to that rule. His memory might live on forever,

but he knows posthumous fame isn't really worth anything. He says, you know, focus on what you can now. Be present. You're not exempt from anything. You're a regular person. Eventually, you'll find yourself in your deathbed, and it may well be sooner than you would like it to be in such a life.

One of my favorite passages in Meditations, Marcus Sueris, talks about washing off the dust of earthly life. I think studying philosophy is a way to do that. Going for a walk is a way to do that. The Romans would have done that in the bathhouse. We can imagine Markus after a day of hearing cases or meetings, he would have been dirty, literally and figuratively, and he would have walked to a bathhouse at gymnasium, and he would have cleaned himself there.

He would have gotten in a cold plunge or a thermal pool. In fact, at a quimcom where Marcus writes a chunk of medications, you can step in one of those pools. It's still running today. There's something beautiful and timeless about that. And I think very practical about the reminder of washing off the dust of earthly life, literally and metaphorically. It was funny, I was going through my copy of Meditations many years ago and I found inside

a receipt. It was for borders in Riverside, California, and stored as an existing in more. And then I realized it wasn't my name, my credit card on the receipt, it was my wife's. And I realized that shortly after my wife and I had met, I just read Meditations and she went and bought that copy. That was something we shared and talked about. And this copy is still there with us. I'll show you a picture of it.

But Marcus really, himself, is changed by a book recommendation. His philosophy teacher, Rousticus, gives him a copy of epictetus and they bond over it. Books can change our lives. They can connect us with other people. They can be with us for years, decades. I think there's something to be said in meditations, but then also in my copy of meditations,

without the singular power of a book to bring people together. There's a immense amount of control or influence that the translator has over how they choose to use this worker that word and that can mean a world of difference. But also like when you just get the crappy translation that's in the public domain or the cheapest one in Amazon, like you're selling yourself short.

I feel so lucky I got the haze translation early. The point is, books are an investment. You shouldn't cheap out. You shouldn't get the cheapest one. You should get the one that's right. That's best. And there's a reason these things cost money, it's that they're worth money.

My life would have been totally different had I gotten a crappier translation, a cheaper translation, or if I'd said, now I'll just get it from the library, I'll skim through it, and I'll give it back. No, reading is an investment, bookshore an investment, and you have to invest accordingly.

I was once having a conversation with the great Robert Green about the Stoics, and it showed me his copy of Marx to realize hisize his meditations and he would write in the margins, a.f. A.F. stood for a more faulty. More faulty actually comes to us from Nietzsche who was not a particularly big fan of the Stoics but expressed something I think at the core of Stoicism. He said, not just to bear what is necessary or accept it since you must love it a more Fati a love of one's fate and it was Robert who made this explicit connection between

Stoicism and a more Fati which I popularized in Stoic and our videos my book Robert and I even made this coin which I carry with me everywhere It has that picture of a fire marks really so again Remember is saying that what you throw on top of fire becomes becomes fuel for the fire. The fire loves what you're throwing in there. So I just love that idea. I'm so indebted to Robert to helping me see this connection between two wildly different philosophical schools of thought, but finally there's one area where they converge. One passage I marked down in Meditations when I first read it, Mark's really going straight to the seat of intelligence. Writing and reading require a master so-to-des-life.

Mentors have been a huge guiding force in my life. Robert Green, others, if you don't have a mentor, if you don't have a teacher, if you don't have the kinds of people that Mark is just thanking and the debts and lessons section of meditations, you're not going to become what you're capable of becoming, you're not going to become anything like Mark is surrealus. The remarkable thing about meditations is that it's really a book for the writer, not for the reader, it's not for you or not. Marcus might even be mortified

that we're here talking about him because he never intended to publish it. The point of meditations was his own practice. He was writing to himself, writing notes to himself. The book accomplished what it was set out to accomplish before it was read by anyone else, let alone, you know, 2000 years later that it's still helping people. And you have to have that kind of journaling practice in your life, I think. How are you meditating on these things? How are you talking to yourself about them? What's the internal dialogue or debate?

Or interrogation process that you have in your life is helping you be what you're capable of, being in who you're capable of being. Marcus really has had a lot to complain about. He's betrayed, he's misled, people lied to him, people try to take things from him. He has a job that he doesn't even want. And yet, nowhere in meditations, what he thinks is his private diary that no one is going to read,

we never once see him complain about any of this. He doesn't complain about being unappreciated, he doesn't complain about being abused, he doesn't complain about being put upon, he doesn't complain about the stress. Because as he says in meditations, we should never be overheard complaining, not even to ourselves.

Concentrate like a Roman marks realises. Concentrate on doing the thing in front of you as if it was the last thing you were doing in your life I think about that pretty often that it could be the last time you send this email It could be the last time you have this conversation It could be the last time that I sit down to write or that I sit down to make a video So am I gonna be fully present? Am I gonna concentrate?

Am I gonna do my job? Am I gonna meet the standards of my people and my profession my history? I got to concentrate like a Roman, and I'm gonna do it like this thing matters, like I might not get another opportunity to do it. To me, that's the test, that's the standard to try to meet every day that you are lucky enough to be alive.

Marcus Rios is clearly very strict with himself. Meditations is one rule, admonishment, almost impossible standard that he's setting for himself after another. And yet, we're told by historians, the brilliance of Marcus is that his strictness was limited solely to himself. Polarit with others, strict with yourself. Conscious of the fact that it was called self-discipline for a reason. You control yourself, you control the standards.

You separate yourself, but you have to be tolerant and understanding of other people. And in other part, in meditation, he chastises himself for not being a better, forgiver of faults. And that's what we have to cultivate. This practice should make us better. Also, we're forgiving and tolerant of other people. Marcus really says, hero of heroes is Antoninus, his adopted stepfather. As far as we know, Antoninus Pius doesn't write anything down. He writes no works of stoic philosophy. He probably wouldn't have even identified as a stoic or as a philosopher. And yet to Marcus he was the embodiment of those toses and philosophy. He was clearly naturally this way and I suspect some people naturally are.

I think we can deduce that because Marcus did have to write this book, Marcus wasn't naturally this way. He was struggling like you and I are struggling. He was trying to get there. He needed the extra help. And it is inevitable that we will fall short, which is why in Meditations, Mark really says to pick yourself back up when you fall,

but he also says to celebrate the fact that you're a human being. What matters, he says, is that you come back to the rhythm of it, right? We're gonna be jarred by circumstances. We're gonna be messed up. We're gonna slip on our diet, on our New Year's resolution, on the goal we have. That's okay.

What matters is that you get back up. What matters is that more often than not, you stick to it that you always come back home to it. In one passage, it goes, it's unfortunate that this happens. Then it catches himself, and there's no, it's fortunate that it happened to you. And we think about all the things that happened

to Marcus Aurelius in his life. Plagues, war, flooding. He loses children, he has a troublesome son. People think his wife is cheating on him. It's one thing after another. But he doesn't run from any of this. He doesn't hide from it. He doesn't throw himself a pee part.

Even though he felt sorry for himself in that minute, he always saw it as an opportunity. He rose to the occasion. One engine historian would say that Marcus doesn't meet with the good fortune that he deserved. But then he says, but I admired him all the more for that because he preserved himself and the empire despite these extraordinary circumstances. That's what greatness is. That's what the obstacle is the way is really about. Several points in meditations mark to really summarizes what are in effect the three disciplines of stoicism that you need to know always. Perception, how we see things, what part of this is in my control, what isn't, what is it actually, how do I see this clearly as possible? Then the next step is what are you going to do about? What action can you take?

And the third part is the will, the fortitude, the strength of the perseverance that you bring to bear on that problem obstacle situation. Perception, action, will. That's the essence of stoic philosophy, which Marcus organizes meditations around and returns to repeatedly over and over again. Marcus Rea's would have been cheered everywhere He went there would have been prurades. He's given a Roman triumph. He built statues of him. They flatter him and every room Is he's the most important person there. He has this remarkable way of describing all of that the clapping is the smacking of hands He says that cheering is the clacking of tongues.

Doing that contemptuous expression that we talked about, the idea that this stuff doesn't matter, let's see it as it actually is. Don't just take it for granted that at a standing ovation says something special about you, that obviously being all these people talking about you is important. Think about what it actually is.

Think about what it actually represents. Break it down and see it in this skeptical, almost cynical light and it loses its power over you. Obviously Marcus is an idealist. Obviously he's a perfectionist. Obviously he wants to be good and he wants other people to be good. He's also pragmatic, he's also realistic. He says in meditations, don't go around expecting Plato's Republic. Cicero says of Cato that he acted as if he lived in Plato's Republic instead of the d says of Cato that he acted as if he lived in Plato's Republic instead of the dregs of Romulus.

Obviously, you wanna be good, despite what's happening in the outside world, but you can't also expect perfection or a utopia because we don't live there. You have to be pragmatic and realistic and practical. When you're just setting yourself up to be disappointed, you're setting yourself up to have your heart broken. Which is what Marcus is preparing against

at the beginning of meditations, like we talked about. He says, the people you are going to meet are, the new way in jail is frustrating, mean all of that, right? Not to things in Plato's Republic. You've got to be ready, you've got to expect those things. Not only can you not expect Plato's Republic, you have to deal with the place that you're in,

you've got to make practical decisions based on what you're in. It says that the cucumber is bitter. Throw it out. It says that there's brambles in the path. Go around. Don't despair. Don't be mad. Don't wish it was otherwise. Just get to work. Start where you are with what you have and build from there. Almost every smart person that's ever lived has loved reading. They love books. They lose themselves in books. And yet, why does he write at the beginning of meditations that he needs to stop reading to throw away his books? Well, it's because any virtue taken too far can be a vice, right?

Marcus really is probably loved going into his books because his books were simpler than the job that he had. His philosophy texts were cleaner and clearer than the complicated moral ambiguities of life. He was saying that a philosopher has to be a doer not just the thinker, and in fact, the Stokes, they didn't like what they called the pen and ink philosophers. The people who were just readers, they weren't doers.

It's good advice. It's wonderful to read, and you should read as much as possible. But you can't live in there. You have to live in the real world. You can imagine that as the emperor of Rome, people had a lot of strong opinions about Marx. They thought he was the best in the world. They thought he was the worst in the world. They thought he sucked. They thought he was amazing. He would have been bombarded with opinions about him. He has to not think about it. He has to set his own standards, just to keep his own inner scorecard. He says at one point in meditations that the perks of his job is that you can earn a bad reputation by doing good deeds.

Think of someone like Harry Truman who makes a bunch of momentous, critical, probably the correct decisions. But he leaves office one of the least popular presidents in American history. That's what Marcus is talking about. People have strong opinions about what you do, but you have to set your own standards, your own scorecard, and you have to do the right thing because it's the right thing, not because it's gonna make you popular,

or conversely, not concerned whether it might make you unpopular. Objective judgment now at this very moment. Unselfish action now at this very moment. Willing acceptance now at this very moment. Heing acceptance now at this very moment. He says, that's all that you need. That's the formula for turning an obstacle upside down. First, you have to see it clearly.

Second, you have to focus on what's possible, what you can do for others here. And third, you have to accept the parts of it that are outside your control. You have to bring kind of fortitude and strength to it. Perception, action, will. That's all that you need. I was lucky enough

actually to interview Gregory Hayes the translator of these two books way back in 2007 and I asked him what his favorite passage and meditation was. And he said this, I'll read to you. He said, keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone. Those that are now and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river. But what is in constant flux? Why has a thousand variations? Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of the past and future gapes before us, a chasm whose depths we cannot see.

I probably missed the brilliance of that until I saw him read it, but it stuck with me ever since. And actually when we illustrated this edition of meditations, I tried to capture that. The time blows like a river, and you just think of it. Russian past, you think of Marcus Rivas writing it near the Danube. Water is clearly this repeated metaphor and analogy in the Stoics,

and it can teach us so much. And most of all I think it can both humble and inspire us. Arx Rios talks about being jarred by circumstances messing up failing. He talks about the idea of a rhythm coming back to the rhythm. And I like this idea. I think Stoics talk about the logos for the way. You think of the logos the kind of rhythm of the universe being the way. It's something you come back to. So even if you screw up, it's always there. The metronome is always there.

The rhythm of the music is always there. You want to come back to it. Like a lot of people, I have a tendency to overwork, to overdo, to overcommit, to take things too intensely. I want you to really warns themselves against this in meditations, and it's stuck with me always. These are in your actions, don't procrastinate, in your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander, in your actions, don't procrastinate, in your conversations, don't confuse,

in your thoughts, don't wander, in your soul, don't be passive or aggressive, in your life, don't be all about business, right? Don't be all about business. If you want tranquility, you have to do less. It's about doing less, it's about saying no more. The question we have to ask ourselves constantly is, is this

essential? Because most of what we do and say is not essential and when you eliminate the inessential he says that's good in and of itself. But secondarily you get the benefit of doing the essential things better. You have to say no, you have to say no. Multiple times Marcus used a word that I totally missed, like for instance, to move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind, only their delight and stillness. Stillness is a very Eastern word, but it also has roots in the stillness as an adoraxia apathy of this idea for the stillness

of not being disturbed by external circumstances, by internal circumstances, not caring what other people say, not caring what other people do, get into a place of stillness. This is clearly what Marcus was studying philosophy for and where he wanted to get. Stillness, though, it is this idea that Marcus returns to over and over and over again,

probably because he had so little stillness in his busy chaotic, crazy life. He wants to be like the rock that the wave crashes over eventually the sea falls still around. I think of that metaphor all the time. The world is going to be crazy. All these things are happening but we're quite what you can have and certain kind of strength and stillness and inner fortitude is the ability to be calm amid the turbulence. To be still even as the world is spinning around you.

Everything lasts for a day, the nowhere and the known. This is a pretty interesting observation from a man who was the most famous man in the world in that time. A man who's still so famous, you can buy coins with his face on them on Etsy. They survive as historical documents worth hundreds. If you've got thousands of dollars, this is a guy whose book still pops on and off the bestseller list, whose search engine show have it all time spike

in popularity. The Marcus Aurelis would also remind himself that posthumous fame isn't really worth anything. He's not around to enjoy it. What matters as was he deserving of that in his own time? Was he good then? Is he famous for the right reasons for doing good stuff for being a good person? So we can imagine when Marcus comes to the end of life and realizes he's gonna die. I wonder if he thought about the passage that he wrote in book

1036. He says, it doesn't matter how good a life you've led. There will still be people standing around the bed Who will welcome the sad event his point was if you're doing this for validation if you're doing this to be loved If you're doing this to be remembered the rewards for doing the right thing have to be the right thing can't be doing it to be like You can't care about what other people think you can't try to please everyone all the time be everyone's favorite Especially as a leader especially as a leader, especially as a leader. So Marcus had to constantly be aware of this and I wondered if when he actually came to

the end of his life, if he thought about the fact that maybe secretly some of these people were glad he would be gone soon and if he had to come to terms with those words that he'd written so long ago. In book four of meditations, this is 437, it says, on the verge of dying, and you're still weighed down, still turbulent, still convinced that external things can harm you, still lead to other people,

still not acknowledging the truth that wisdom is justice. I just love the intensity with which he's addressing himself. Mark, again, is it perfect? He's still struggling with it. He's saying, it's the end of your life, and you still haven't gotten this right. And he's repeating to himself who he wants to be, how he should be.

And I think, and this is the important part, he's also saying it's not too late. It's never too late. It's funny, Marcus, I think meditating on moment to worry to root himself in the present moment. And you do notice that Marcus talks about the present moment over and over and over again in Meditations, he's reminding yourself that it's the only thing you have. It's the only thing you can lose. I think that's because he

Like us found it so easy to get distracted to think about the past or the future to worry about this to regret that and The consequence of that is you're losing the only thing you have, you're saying, which is right now. The fruit of this life, Marcus, says at one point in meditation, it's good character and acts for the common good. Elsewhere he talks about this, epithets for the self. Those are two pretty good ones, right?

You should be good character always, and do good things for other people always. And to Marcus, that's what he was striving to do always. Good character, good deeds. It's hard to come up with a better summation for a good life than that. There's a pretty amazing story about Marcus really. It's pretty late in life he's seen leaving his palace in Rome, he's carrying these tablets and a friend says, where are you going? He says, I'm off to see sexist the philosopher to learn that which I do not yet know. The friend Marbles says,

here's the most powerful man in the world, even as an old age, picking up his books and going to school. I think that's in effect what Marcus is. He remains a student. It's his notebook. It's his exercise book. It's his workbook. He's doing work on himself even as an old man. And the fruits of that come down to us. It's just so wonderful to think of Marcus even as an old man. And the fruits of that come down to us. It's just so wonderful to think of Marcus even as an old man.

Maybe some of the lines in here he learned from sexist to philosopher. He thanks sexist philosopher in book one, The Deaths and Lessons chapter. So the idea for Marcus was that you always stay a student. We know that Marcus really doesn't want to be emperor. In fact, he breaks down in cries when he is told he's going to be Emperor. Because he knew how many bad emperors there were. And I also think he probably had a little bit of imposter syndrome.

He wasn't someone who sought out power, and so when power came his way, he wondered if he could do it. If he had the skills, if he was strong enough, smart enough, firm enough, ruthless enough. But before Marcus becomes Emperor, he has a dream, we're told. And in that dream, he dreams that he has shoulders made of ivory. That was to him letting himself know that he was strong enough to bear the way. He could do it. And in meditations, we catch him reminding himself of that

lesson that he learned many years ago early on before he'd taken power. He says, remind yourself that if it's humanly possible, know that you can do it also. These people aren't better than you. They're not given some gift that you don't have. They became who they needed to be. They gave themselves the shoulders of ivory that Mark's really has realized deep down he had all along. The stoic speak of this idea of the inner citadel,

this sort of part inside yourself that can't be touched by externals, good news, bad news, good fortune, misfortune, Mark's really straight writes that stuff cannot touch the soul. And I think that's what we see despite all the things that we know happen to Marcus in his life, all the good fortune that he did not meet with, all the misfortune that he did not deserve, nothing touches the inner goodness inside him. That's what meditation shows. It shows that despite the filth, the dust, the stress of life, what remains is the goodness.

He keeps that pure bubbling up always. There's just no one that Marcus speaks more highly of in meditation than Antoninus. We're more consistently. Antoninus takes up a bigger chunk in meditation than Marcus's mother, than Marcus's family, and he comes back to it later in the book. Antoninus is a gift from the gods in Marx's view. He's older than Marx, they have no blood relation, but they have this long apprenticeship with each other.

Marx sees as this for all that it could be he studies Antoninus. He was the model Ernest Brannon says the perfect life for Marx. And so that's why repeatedly in meditations you see Marx talking about what he learned from Antoninus, what he learned from his adopted stepfather, and I think having a hero like that is just so important and why Antoninus takes up such a big chunk of debts and lessons. Sometimes when I sign copies of the Daily Stoic or when people want me to

sign their copies of Marcus Really, which is a weird thing I could have never imagined 15 years ago, I write one of my favorite quotes from Marx to Realize. He says, fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you. Or I shorten that, I do my version of it. I say, fight to be the person philosophy wants you to be. That to me is the struggle of Marx to Realize. He wants to be what Antoninus knows he could be, what Rome needs him to be,

what philosophy, what stoicism thought he could be. And that was the ideal, the standard that he aspired to be like always. Meditations is filled with self-criticism, with pushing himself to be better, calling himself into account. Again, Marcus really is incredibly powerful. People told him how amazing he was. They worshipped him as a God, and the more successful, the more important, the more

beloved you are, the more important it is to have this practice. No one could tell Marcus what he was doing wrong, what he needed to do better. He had to do that. And look the same is true in this world that we live in, where we have wonderful freedom, where we don't live under a tyrant, where there is no authority, monitor, and everything we do and say anything. But that doesn't mean we should do whatever we want to say and think or do. We have to hold ourselves accountable.

We have to follow that process ourselves. In the middle of meditations, and there's a couple other sprinkles around, you see Marcus really talk about loss, specifically the loss of children. And this is something he knows intimately well, tragically, think about what it would be like to bury a child, and how much that would affect him for. Marcus doesn't do this one time or two times,

but six times, he loses all of his male heirs except for comedies, just brutal. And the most tragic and painful of circumstances, a medical procedure that goes wrong, the play, childbirth, infancy, it's just one thing after another from youngest. Yet not only does he continue to get out of bed every morning, he writes this book with such grace and love,

herpice, strut, like, he could have been broken by this. He had every reason to be broken by this. No one would hold it against him if he had been, yet he wasn't. And to me, that's both a testament to the philosophy itself but also a testament to his incredible and inspiring character. The Emperor of Rome would have had beautiful palaces, Marcus from a rich family would have had access

to country estates and he could afford the finest resorts or retreats. And he reminds himself though that people who try to get away from it all are chasing something that doesn't exist, like that Buddhist idea that wherever you go there you are. You can retreat into yourself anytime you want. He says you can find replenishment and rest

and relaxation inside your own soul. And I think that's what he's doing in meditations, that's what he's doing in books, that's what he's doing when he would go on walks, when he would look at the world poetically. He realized that he didn't have to flee to some exotic location, all the things he needed and wanted right there.

And they weren't external things at all. They were inside of him just as they are inside all of us. The Moceneca talks about how the greatest empire is self command being in charge of yourself. If you can see Marcus Realis, this guy who controls literally an enormous empire, struggling with that same idea, realizing that, yeah, I can make the army do this, yeah, I can purchase that,

yeah, I can make the Senate do this, but that the real power, the real thing to focus on is am I in command or control of myself? There's a story about Hadrian getting mad losing his temper and stabbing a secretary in the eye with a pen. He could get away with that, nobody cared. Marcus doesn't do anything like that. There's no stories like that about Marcus.

Marcus realized that yeah, there was only a few people wherever powerful enough to be emperor, but fewer among the emperors was a man who was in command of himself. And as Sennaka said, no one is fit to rule who was not first. In control of themselves, that's what Marcus strove to be. And in many ways, that's what meditations was him trying to get a little bit better at.

I might have repeated myself in a few of these, but then again, Marcus repeats himself a lot through meditations. Because he's not writing a prescription about all of the philosophy. He's not trying to tackle every situation or problem or or facet of stosism. He's trying to talk about what he needs. Which seems to be reminders of his mortality. Which seems to be why he should lose his temper. Which seems to be about

controlling his ambition. Seems about taking the long view or the big scene things big picture. Meditations is not complete or comprehensive. It's a book about the things view or the big scene, things big picture. Meditations is not complete or comprehensive. It's a book about the things Marcus meets the most. Just as your journal should be repeatedly coming back to the themes that you need the most help with, with the things you're struggling the most with. That we can read Marcus Arelius' meditations. The private thoughts, the most powerful man in the world, is just an incredible fluke of history and good luck. There's no intention of publishing it. he'd probably be mortified that we're

making it. Just even think of how unlikely it is that a thing written on, you know, wax tablets or parchment two thousand years ago manages to survive to us. How many good things had to happen? How many flukes of circumstances and good fortune had to happen for us to get there? It survived to us primarily because the Romans were good record keepers because someone decided not to toss this look of philosophy out. They probably ignored Marcus's final wishes, but also because a chain of monks, all nameless, all forgotten, recorded, wrote over and over again, translated Marcus's works, and eventually enough copies of it survived,

that it survived to us. So my final thought has been step back from these lessons of meditations, the final lesson, I think we can take from the existence of the book itself, should be a note of gratitude. We're so lucky. You run the same process again, a hundred times, ninety-nine of those times, you're not going to get the book surviving. We are so lucky. It is a black swan, a black swans, wonderful fluke of circumstances that works out to our benefit and that should both humble us and make us feel really

really fortunate that we get to read and learn from this wise man in such a deeply personal and vulnerable and helpful way. That's why I wanted to bring this leather addition out which I think you're really going to like you can check out how to get it below. which I think you're really going to like, you can check out how to get it below. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stood Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad free on Amazon Music.

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