The Daily Stoic - Are You In Touch With Your Future? | Wherever You Go, There Your Choice Is

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

As Gandhi sat with a reporter one hot afternoon, he began experiencing some stomach pains. An attendant brought him a mudpack to place on his abdomen. “This puts me in touch with my future,” he said with a smile.He was joking about his mortality, just as the Stoics and all wise philosophers have. The reporter was a bit surprised. You are so young, he said. And that’s when Gandhi reminded him, as Marcus Aurelius did in Meditations, that age didn’t matter. Death was the common lot of all people he said, “some in a hundred years, but all sooner or later will die.”In today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt, Ryan examines the power of choice through the Epictetus quote: "A podium and prison is each a place, one high and the other low. But in each place your freedom of choice is to be maintained if you so wish."✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stokeic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics,

from Epipetus Markus, Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. Are you in touch with your future? As Gandhi sat with a reporter one hot afternoon, he began experiencing some stomach pains, an attendant brought him a mud pack to place on his abdomen. This puts me in touch with my future, he said, with a smile. He was joking about his mortality, just as the Stokes and all wise philosophers have.

The reporter who was sitting there with him was a bit surprised. You are so young, he said. And that's when Gandhi reminded him as Marcus really stood in meditations that age didn't matter. Death was the common lot of all people, he said, some in a hundred years, but all sooner or later will die. In meditations, Marcus spoke often of the emperors who preceded him, where it was Antoninus

or Hadrian, Vespassian, Rys, or Augustus, where it was Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. They were all dead. Some lived long lives, some lived short ones, but eventually they all went in the same ground next to their mule drivers and enemies alike. And so will we. Our future has us packed in mud or incinerated in a furnace. That is a fact. Youth, good genes, fame, plans, none of this changes

what has been ordained for us. It may delay it, but that's the best we can hope for. So let's face it and get in touch with it before it comes as a surprise. That's my momentum worry coin. I think about it all the time playing with it on my desk right now. It's on that carry always. It's probably the thing I get asked about the most when I bump into people in public. It's just been a game changer for me. I have a bunch of different Memento Mori reminders, of course. But if you want to get this one, which we make here in the US, in a mint in Minnesota,

that's been in business since 1882, you can check it out in the Daily Stoke store. Or if you're in Bastrop, you can stop by my bookstore here, the Payneed Portrait Main Street, where we sell them as well. It's Game Changer, so check it out. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree'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. Wherever you go, there your choices. This is the January 19th entry in the daily Stoic. And our quote today is also from Epic Titus Discourses 2.6. He says, a podium and a prison is each a place, one high and the other low,

but in each place your freedom of choice is to be maintained if you so wish. The Stoics all held vastly different stations in life. Some were rich and some were born at the bottom of Rome's hierarchy. Others had it easy and others had it unimaginably hard. This is true for us as well. We all come to philosophy from different backgrounds, and even within our own lives we experience bouts of good fortune and bad fortune. But in all circumstances, adversity or advantage, we really have just one thing we need to do. Focus on what is

in our control as opposed to what is not. Right now we might be laid low with struggles, whereas just a few years ago we might have lived high on the hog, and in just a few days we might be doing so well that our success is actually a burden. One thing will stay constant, our freedom of choice, both in the big picture and the small. Ultimately, this is clarity. Whoever we are, wherever we are, what matters is our choices. What are they? How will we evaluate them? How will we make the most of them?

Those are the questions that life asks us regardless of our station. How will you answer? This is actually one of the quotes that Stockdale sort of leans on in his seven years in the Hanway Hilton, that a podium and a prison is each a place, right? He experienced both. He's a high-ranking military officer. He's gone to great colleges. He lived a great life in America. And then all of a sudden he's parachuting into a camp

where he is viciously tortured and deprived day after day after day. And in some sense, many, many, many, many of his choices were taken from him. Right. Do I go for a walk today or not? Or do I eat this or that? Do I do this or that? Right. So much of his life becomes circumscribed there in this tiny cell in this solitary confinement. And yet he retains always the choices of what kind of person he is going to try to be

in those circumstances. Is he going to do his job? Is he going to stick with the philosophy that he believes in? You know, is he going to give up or not? Right, he still has a lot of choices inside this world where so much choice has been stripped away. And that's really what the Stokes are saying. You become extremely wealthy, extremely powerful, you have more choices, but you also have the same choices, right? Everything is taken from you and you're literally a pit in the ground, you're in a prison cell, all that power and wealth and all this stuff has been taken away. And yet most of the same choices remain, right? The dichotomy of control

is still more or less the same. And so, you know, stoicism is then even at its core, right? Epictetus and Marcus Aurelis, those two men occupied those two spheres, not theoretically, but in practice. Actuality. Marcus Aurelis is all powerful. Epictetus is powerless. Podium, prison. If they both try to focus on what's in their control, they both try to be a good person. They both try to make beautiful choices within the world that they are in.

They both try to let reason rule those choices, let ethics, let virtually those choices. And that's the lesson for us today. That's the idea that wherever we go, our choice follows us. We still have choices. We always have choices. Not as many of the choices as we are legally entitled to that we deserve, it's fair, that's right, etc. that we want, whatever. We still have choices inside every single situation right on down, how we feel about it, and how we respond to it. That's what you should think about today, and I wish you all the best. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon music, download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery

Plus in Apple podcasts. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans formed the free Brittany movement dedicated to

fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.