The Daily Stoic - Can You Imagine?
Episode Date: April 30, 2025We are all fighting our own battles, we are all besieged by misfortune in our own ways.🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Wat...ch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Welcome to The Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation
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Can you imagine?
He was powerful, he was wise, he was important.
He was not spared.
In 147 AD, Marcus Aurelius welcomed the birth of his firstborn, a daughter named Domitia.
He would bury her within a few short years.
In 149, Marcus Aurelius and his wife had twin sons.
They would both die in infancy.
And sadly, this was the rule
and not the exception for Marcus.
He would end up burying the majority of his children.
Can you imagine the pain,
the hammer blows of one tragedy after another?
There's no way he didn't stagger under the weight of it all. His hair would have turned gray, his shoulders would have stooped, he would have stared off in
the distance. He would have, as we know he did, broken down in tears at the mention of loss or
memories. And nor would his story have been particularly unique in Rome. Infant mortality
was high, life was unpredictable and cruel. But the world is
not all that different today. We are all fighting our own battles. We are all
besieged by misfortune in our own ways. Marcus Aurelius' story should inspire us
not just to carry on but to be sympathetic and patient with others. You
have no idea what the person in front of you at the grocery store line is going
through. The people you disagree with whose views you don't understand.
Imagine what tragedies and pain have shaped them.
Imagine the weight of what they carry.
It's this perspective that binds us that shows us that beneath all that power,
wisdom, or status, or strangeness, or bafflingness. There remains a human being underneath
bearing unseen burdens and suffering
and that they just like us deserve a little compassion,
a little grace and a little understanding too.
["The Daily Stoic"]
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