The Daily Stoic - David Kessler on Finding Meaning in Grief and Practicing the Art of Memento Mori

Episode Date: October 5, 2024

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” Death is inevitable for all of us and practicing the art of Memento Mori reminds us to live each day to the fullest and with virtue. David Kessler, a grief and loss expert, joins Ryan today to talk about why a meaningful life comes from embracing rather than fearing death, how grief can shape our understanding and appreciation of life, the balance between grief and joy, and how losing his son changed everything he thought he knew about grief. David’s personal experience with grief started very young, as a child witnessing a mass shooting while his mother was dying in a hospital. For most of his life, David has taught physicians, nurses, counselors, police, and first responders about the end of life, trauma, and grief. Even after years of studying grief and counseling those experiencing it, his life was turned upside down by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son.David co-authored two books with Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, including On Grief and Grieving, and after experiencing the death of his son, he updated her 5 stages of grief with a 6th stage: meaning. 📚 Grab signed copies of Finding Meaning and the Finding Meaning Workbook by David Kessler at The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ Go to griefbook.com and follow David Kessler on Instagram and X | @IAmDavidKessler 📕 Our favorite translation of Seneca’s essays on grief and loss, Hardship and Happiness (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca) is available at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/🪙 Designed with the intention of carrying them in your pocket, our Memento Mori Medallion is a literal and inescapable reminder that “you could leave life right now.”Check it out at https://store.dailystoic.com/See 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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So get going and growing with Constant Contact today. Try it free at constantcontact.ca. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend,

we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. One of the things that happens as you get older, as time passes, is everyone else gets older and with the passage of time, people pass on. I think about this a lot. Actually, we did a Daily Stoic email not that long ago, just thinking about people who had been on the Daily Stoic podcast who are no longer with us. Here, I'll show you that.

A couple of weeks ago, we pointed out that even though Daily Stoic hasn't been around that long, we've already lost many of our favorite guests and influences. Peter Lawler, Paul Woodruff, Michael Sugru, Dr. Sue Johnson, and was it a month, month and a half ago now, Jake Seliger, who had been on the podcast at a terminal cancer diagnosis, he died,

which was sad and hard, especially for the people who knew him better than I did. That's probably one of the things I get asked most about from people, I'll get random emails, people go, I just lost someone that I love, I'm grieving someone, what do the stoics have to say about loss and grief?

And the reality is they have a lot to say. Seneca writes these very moving essays on grief, which I recommend all the time, actually when today's guest was here. I gave him a copy of Seneca's Hardship and Happiness, one of my favorite go-tos from Seneca, just a beautiful book. It's got not only all the shortness of life in it,

but it's got his sort of collections on grief. Not that my guest today needs much instruction in that regard. David Kessler is a grief and loss expert who not only went through this personally, he talks quite movingly in today's episode about the loss of his son, but he'd written two books with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who came up with the five stages of grief and part of going through that experience led him to add a sixth stage of grief, this idea of meaning. He's experienced death and loss in all the ways you can imagine.

Actually as a young boy, he witnessed a mass shooting while his mother was dying in the hospital. And since then, he's taught physicians and nurses and counselors and first responders about end of life, about trauma, about grief. And then he lost his 21 year old son, something I can only imagine going through, which is actually what the Stoics tell us to do, to imagine that happening,

to not want to think about the things that might cause us grief and then be overwhelmed by that grief, but to be familiar with it, to think about it, to practice the art of memento mori. You can leave life right now, Mark Strzli says. Let that determine what you do and say and think. That's my memento mori coin right here.

I was really moved by this interview. I think you're really gonna like it. You can grab signed copies of his book, Finding Meaning and the Finding Meaning Workbook at the Painted Porch. And if you head over to griefbook.com, you upload your receipt, you can get this Finding Meaning companion course

that he has a step-by-step guide to applying the workbook to your life. You can check out his best-selling work, Finding Meaning, The Sixth Stage of Grief, and his new release, Finding Meaning Workbook, that goes with it. I think you're really gonna like this interview and pass it along to someone

if you know they're going through something and definitely check out Finding Meaning and the Seneca book I was telling you about. You can follow David on Instagram and Twitter at I am David Kessler. I was thinking about you upstairs because I'm writing this section about Lincoln right now in the book that I'm working on.

And here I'll read you this. So apparently a week before he dies, he loved poetry and he recites this Longfellow poem from memory to this group that he's with. And it says, there is no flock, however watched and tended, but one dead lamb is there. There is no fireside, however defended, but has one vacant chair. The air is full of farewells to the dying and mornings for the dead. The heart of Rachel for her children crying

will not be comforted. Let us be patient, these severe afflictions, not from the ground arise, but oftentimes celestial benedictions assume this dark disguise." And he didn't know that he had a week to live. Yes. There's an idea from Cicero, he says that basically the whole point of philosophy is to learn how to die. But I might add to that because we only do that one time and this is, I think connects to your work. It strikes me that the point of philosophy is to learn how to die and to deal with death because we deal with the latter more often than our own death.

Right. You know, I mean, I've listened to you for so long and I'm like, my work aligns so much with the Stoics. It's really surprising to me how well it does. Well, what's weird is, okay, so there's this timelessness of, so we go back thousands of years to philosophize us to learn how to die. And then Kubla Ross, I mean, she's like my grandma's age or was born roughly, I think she was born a few years younger than my, or later than my grandma. So it's fascinating to me that there is this timelessness and then also the idea that we're still making breakthroughs

in the study of essentially the most human and timeless thing. is timelessness and then also the idea that we're still making breakthroughs in the study of essentially the most human and timeless thing. It's kind of strange. And how taboo it still is. Yes, what is that? Our fears. Sure.

Just our fears. I think that's it. We don't wanna talk about it. It's just, you know, it's our fear. But doesn't that make it more scary probably? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, because we don't talk about it, it's just, you know, it's our fear. But doesn't that make it more scary probably? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, because we don't talk about it,

it takes on this sort of power and mystery and severity. I mean, it is severe and it is mysterious and yet not talking about it doesn't help us. Just makes it all worse. Yes. Makes it all worse. The other idea from Epicurus that I'm about, he's like, why are you so afraid of a thing that removes your fear with it?

So it's almost, it's like this thing we dread doing as if we're the ones doing it. Right. And that the fear is going to continue and just like that it will be over. And that's what's really amazing about being with so many dying people is like, oh, something happens and this becomes okay. Is it like having kids where you just can't possibly conceive of the change and the way that you have evolutionarily and culturally been prepared for this thing your whole life. And it's not till that switch flips that you realize you

had something in you. And then you're in it, on it, get it. It just happens, just like that. You're okay with it. Although that's an interesting thing, like when you have kids, right, you just assume like, oh, people have been doing this for millions of years, obviously we're just good at it. And that's not true. Like I know a lot of women struggle with like breastfeeding. They're like, shouldn't I just be naturally good at this?

And then they're not, and then they think there's something wrong with them, or they're reluctant to have help or take advice because it compounds some of those feelings of like imposter syndrome. So it's weird, it's this thing that obviously we know how to do and yet clearly we don't know how to do it. And interestingly enough, it's all about attachment and there's a lot of fears that come up around detaching

because of the detaching. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, so you've obviously spent lots and lots of time with dying people. What stands out at you most about them? Well, I think the biggest thing is that everything we worry about, you just don't worry about at the end.

I mean, I've been at homes and, you know, someone comes over and says, do you want to to the person who's in the last chapter of their life, do you want to see my new car? And they're like, no, no. Like how ridiculous was that concept all of a sudden? Yeah. You just realize, oh, everything that we thought was going to make us and become us, and what we identify means nothing.

Yeah. Means nothing. And it's the people, it's the love, it's everything else. It turns out in the volume on a lot of stuff. But it's weird, because when you do one of those exercises, you're like, what would I do if I found out I had cancer? What if you do, what would I do if I found out I had cancer? What would I do if I found out I had only a short time to live?

We could see how it would transform our perspective on these things, but it's not as if we don't have some fatal diagnosis. Like, it's not a hypothetical exercise. Every day. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing about my world is like, every day there's a story of someone who thought they were doing a podcast and got in a car wreck on the way there and died.

Like every day could be the day. You know, one of the things that I think about is, interestingly enough, I ran into someone in my neighborhood that I worked with 30 years ago. And we were chatting and she's like, oh, I followed your career. And you know, I'd love to be your friend, but it would be just too depressing. And I sort of gently explained to her

in not a desperate be my friend sort of way that was like, you would be surprised how happy I am. Yeah. That I have a really full happy life because I'm around it so much, which I know is counter intuitive. But this doesn't depress me, this makes me show up more. Yeah, the idea of momentum work can either be very depressing or it can actually be sort of invigorating and clarifying. Like if you're going to die, why be unhappy? And aren't we all going to die? Yeah.

And it's going to happen. Yeah. You know, I always make jokes when I give lectures about, you know, the statistics are in. And you know, even though we don't have a full year for 2024, it's looking like it's gonna be the same, the death rate's still 100%. Now that's the reality of this. It's the one prophecy that has never failed. And going along with your work,

how many stories we make up. I mean, I have people all the time who goes, David, you know, our family's cursed. And I'll go, what do you mean cursed? Oh, you don't understand. The grandparents have, like both sets of grandparents, they've died. And there was a cousin and I'll go, oh my gosh,

you know, the death rate's really high in your family. Yeah. And I go, should we compare it to the death rate in other families? And people are like, oh yeah, you're gonna see we're high. And I'm like, no, it's like 100%, like every ancestor. Yeah, the Kennedys are cursed in that there was assassinations and car accidents, but that's not in the end,

not to take away from anyone's pain. That's not in the end any more devastating than dying in bed or dying in a train accident or dying being murdered by a stranger in a street crime. Like it's the same thing happening and it I think very reasonably hurts more when that person has all kinds of potential in their whole life ahead of them. But yeah, the death rate in every family is 100%. Right. And just like you said, we're not sure. I mean, maybe the quick death from the inside might be the better one. I mean, I don't know. We'll have to all see. Yeah. That is the thing is all the insights contained in that experience are uncharitable for the most part.

Correct. Do you think you take from your experience with dying people, like how has it changed how you think about things day to day? Well, I think there's the human side. I always joke about just because, and I think this is true with a lot of people, when you've had

catastrophes, you become a catastrophizer. Oh, sure. Extrapolating out what might happen. Oh my gosh. I always say, I never have a headache. I only have a brain tumor. I mean, that's just how that works. And so no one's late. They're in a ditch. I mean, that's just life, but it also makes me work harder at really thinking about what's more probable than possible. It's probably a headache. They're probably late and I really have to check my stories. I think a lot. Yeah, I was thinking about that in regards to anxiety.

So anxiety is not just that in regards to anxiety. So anxiety, it's not just that it's not fun. I was thinking about what it steals from you. I've been thinking about the times that I've had with my kids that I wasn't there because I was actually anxious about what might happen or the times I was on vacation and I didn't appreciate it because I was, when do I have to check into my flight and how, you know, this storm is coming. Is that going to affect, you know, travel home? Like if you think about what some of these emotions do is they take from us this very valuable thing, the most precious thing, which is our time. And at the end of our life, that's going to be come home to us how much time we wasted on things that don't matter.

And I don't just think you're going to be going, oh, I spent so much time at the office, that was dumb. I think you're mostly going to be thinking about gotten that literally if someone was to spend time with me or hand me a hundred dollar bill, I'm really clear the time is much more precious. Sure. I'm so clear about it's the biggest gift we have and we squander it more than we do money. Yes.

And I think that like, that's something I don't think we kind of see to the end. We don't see that until the end. Until the end. It becomes clear. Yes. Right. Yeah. Seneca said, you know, you could put all the wisest men in the world in a room and they would be baffled at how we, yeah,

protect property and money more than our time, that we are stingy with renewable resources and the least parsimonious with the most precious resource, which is time. And I have been in the presence of extraordinary, extremely poor people dying. And I've been with a billionaire. And it's exactly the same process. Yeah.

It's like there's no upgrade on that. It's exactly the same. Yeah, it's the great equalizer. It's the great equalizer. So there's like, I think that is, there's no upgrade to be had, like I want the fine. I mean, you're going to be horizontal in a bit. That's kind of going to be had. Like I want the fine, I mean, you know, you're gonna be horizontal in a bit. That's kind of gonna be it. I guess your money can delay it potentially, right? If you, there's a disparity in that maybe one has healthcare options that the other doesn't have.

But at the end, eventually, inevitably it's equalized. Yeah, in meditations, Marcus Rose talks about how in the end, Alexander the Great and his mule driver both buried in the same ground. And then he says the same thing happened to him, which is they get eaten by worms. It's interesting to think, you know, anyone hearing this could go,

oh my gosh, this is depressing. And yet, if you really allow yourself to go there, you're gonna have a fuller life. Yeah, I think what he's saying is not, don't try to do anything. He's saying, conquering the world at great expense to other people and your time and your happiness, it doesn't exempt you from ultimately being worm food.

So you gotta figure out some kind of other metric by which to measure your life and evaluate your priorities. And if we end up in the same place, am I controlling the world with the appropriate amount of control or am I over controlling it? And I know I'm an over controller. Yeah. Or I would say also, if we all end up in the same place, then one of us is not better than the other. And there's a kind of equalizing and human connection that emerges from that, that I think oftentimes ambition,

the lust for power, success or fame can strip you of because you're special, you lust for power, success or fame can strip you of because you're special, you have a destiny, you're important, look at what you've done and you're still a mortal human being. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a loving wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target.

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Follow Kill List on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Kill List early and ad free right now by joining Wondry+. I'm Alex here, the hosts of Wundery's podcast, British Scandal. Our latest series, Peru 2, begins on the sandy shores of Ibiza. Michaela McCollum should have been having the summer of her dreams, but it all went wrong when she met the gorgeous Davy in a bar. Think less holiday romance, more recruitment for a drug cartel. She agreed to team up with another young Brit, fly to Spain to collect a drugs package, then head straight back. However, only at 30,000 feet does Michaela realise she's not on the way to Spain,

she's heading for Peru. And when they get there, they find out it's not a small drugs package, but 11 kilograms of cocaine. The summer holiday turns into a spell in a Peruvian prison and a story that becomes an international media sensation. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondry Plus on Apple podcasts or the Wondry app. So many of us, I'm sure, you know, you've had this experience, you're around extraordinary

people. And when you're around extraordinary people, we all have that moment where we go, they're just a human. Like they're just a human. But that extraordinaryness, like you get there by defying the odds, by doing things that are supposed to be impossible, by transcending limitations, et cetera. So you kind of can very naturally start to go,

well, why should I believe in this thing that everyone else tells me is the great equalizer? And this is where you get the fantasies of living forever or creating the monument of all time to your fame and brilliance and importance. This is the denial of death through accomplishment. Which if you go a few centuries down the road, someone's gonna stand in front of that monument

and go, who is that? Like, who is that? Yeah. I mean, very few people are like, you know, transcend decades or centuries. And let's say that they do. Like, let's say you beat the odds and you are a Marcus Aurelius or a Seneca or an Alexander the Great and we're still talking about you and there's still cities named after you and all of that. Generations upon generations of your descendants are living on the remnants of the

fortune that you've built. Cool. Doesn't do you any good. You're still dead. And I think that was the other insight that Marcus Rose has in Meditations, which he goes, posthumous fame doesn't do anything for the person. And he goes, yeah, also the future, it's not like the future's, everyone in the future is amazing. And he's like, it's still filled with annoying, the same people that aren't appreciating you now, they don't understand you now, are going to be alive in the future. They're going to shrug their shoulders at you. And the very things that we think will make their lives better, that we can maybe leave to them, might or might not. I mean, whatever it is, we can give examples of people who are left wonderful businesses and do extraordinary things or like run them into the

ground after someone put their life out to just make that business or our money, it went well or it went badly. I mean, it's such a crap shoot what happens after we die. And I mean, I think the safest bet is this is it. Right, you could try to accumulate this enormous fortune to leave to your descendants. And what you're not thinking about is one of those future descendants going,

oh, I wish I'd just been born a regular person. This is such a burden or this screwed me up so badly. You're only thinking that you're trying to control something you don't control, which is like in some hilarious cases, people have never even been born. You're trying to steer the lives of people you've never met in some direction as if you know what they want and need. And what you're neglecting is of course your own salvation, and I mean that in the secular sense. You're neglecting what you have right now, the life you have to live this fantasy life that extends through subsequent generations? Well, the other thing I think about control in general, whenever we're in control mode, we're other oriented. And we're talking about the extreme. We're talking about past our life. But

just, you know, whenever we're trying to control another, there's an abandonment of oneself. Yeah. And I think like, when I tell people about control, it's like, yeah, I know I'm controlling. But when it's like, but do you understand when you're trying to make their life work, you're not present in yours. Like if you're trying to make their life work,

who's making your life work? Oh, oh, I didn't think, yeah. Like this is where we have the ultimate control. Yeah, if the idea in Stoicism is that the greatest empire is ourselves, when we're trying to build this external empire or move people around like chess pieces, we're not thinking about who's in control of us. And either no one's in control or what's in control is that ambition or that fear. Maybe we don't perceive it as fear,

but it's this sublimated fear of death and mortality and insignificance. That's what's in charge. So yeah, we're this person who's built out this complicated legacy and codified it in this will that appoints these caretakers. Cessions. Exactly, and yeah, what you're neglecting

is your ability to just be like, none of this matters. What matters is like right now. The thing that I have found also that's fascinating to me is that control really becomes a prescription for yourself. Like whenever I'm like, they should be more blank, I go, all right, I should be more blank. Oh, that would really work well on me. Like whatever I'm trying to control externally is actually a little bit of a recipe

that I need for myself, a little prescription that would actually help me more than the person I'm trying to control. Yeah, every accusation is a kind of confession. And so when you're saying, you should be more like this, you're saying, I am not really like that. And then maybe that's also while you're able to see it in them,

but you're focusing on the thing you don't control, which is this other person and then collecting the one, like if you think that that's a good thing for people to do, your best shot at bringing that into the world is you. Yeah. It's like you spot it, you got it. Yes. But it's sort of go back to the stages of grief though. I do think it's interesting that we,

it's like we're still just starting to understand this thing. I've heard that described as like we're standing on the shore of a vast ocean. It's kind of crazy that we've been doing it for so long and we're just kind of beginning to understand it at any basic level. And I would say we have no understanding sort of metaphysically what happens, but just like how humans respond to grief and loss and the patterns we fall into. The idea that somebody born in the 20s would codify like the now dominant paradigm for understanding that, I don't know,

you'd think it'd be earlier. Well, and the idea of like, I prepped for this trip. And how much preparation do I do for a trip where I'm going to be going a week, two weeks, another country. Death is the trip of a lifetime. Zero prep. Zero prep. You know, I'll figure it out once I'll get there. And it's fascinating. And going back to Kubler-Ross,

one of the things I think that people don't understand is that what made her work so amazing was observation. It's literally like she was watching the sun and said, it's rising in the east and sitting in the west. Yes. People who are dying, they seem to go through this, I can't believe it, the denial, the I'm furious, the anger, the deal making, what if I'm a this or I volunteer more, can I have five more years? The bargaining, the sadness, then the depression, and acceptance. And those turn out to be something we do over our death.

A loved one who dies, a flat tire on our car. I can't believe I got a flat on the way here. I'm here, I should, you know. We do it that instantly and it happens, major losses, micro losses, it's really fascinating. And she said from the beginning, and we said in our work together, not linear. This is descriptive, not prescriptive.

You know, it's not a map for grief. It's not five easy steps to grief. And I think our modern world still wants to reduce it to that. Yeah. I've said this before, when you hear the serenity prayer, you go, oh, that's some timeless human wisdom right there. What Catholic saint came up with that? You go, if you told someone about the Serenity Prayer and then you said, guess which year that was written? There's no way it's under 200 years. Didn't it come from the 12-step meeting last week? I mean, didn't it come, right? I mean,

that's what a lot of people would go. No, but that's where it's from. That's what I'm saying. It feels like it's 2,000 years old or 5,000 years old. It's obviously from the Bible or it's from the Odyssey. It's got to be from some ancient work of art. And then it's like, no, some guy in the 50s made it up on a train. And you go, oh, we're still figuring stuff out about this. And so yeah, the five stages of grief, you're like, obviously, this is like some medieval ritual that they codified during the bubonic plague, or we got this from the Chinese, it's part of this tradition. And you're like, no, no, no. Again, some lady who drove cars and flew on airplanes. And was really mad and angry that she had written so many books, done so many lectures,

tried her best as a woman in medicine in a day when being a woman in medicine wasn't like easy to do at all. I don't think it's easy now, but really hard to do. We want to reduce all her work to five words. Five words. You know, when she was so much more than that. Sure. Yeah. And they last just like that prayer because there's something true, observable in nature. I mean, doesn't your son rise that way and set that way? Don't we all go through, I can't believe this is happening?

And that's what makes these things feel timeless, I think. Yeah, and just the idea that we could, for basically all of time, been doing this exact cycle and just nobody noticed. And nobody put it in those words. It's just an incredible, it's kind of a humbling thing that makes you realize just the fraction of our vast human experience that we've only even begun to wrap our heads around.

Right, it's like suddenly there's language. Yeah. And we can get it and talk about it. Yeah, it's just one of those things that as soon as you hear it, you go, that's true. That's how human experience works. Obviously we've always known this and yet we haven't, we're still figuring it out.

And at some moment, there's gonna be a new aha and we're gonna go, what? It was there all along, how did we not see it? Yeah, and you feel like even the five, there's something else missing. Yes. What is that? I think it's meaning. And this came about after my younger son, David, died, 21 years old.

That must have been horrendous. Brutal, brutal. And I had been doing this work for decades. I knew that children died. I started in children's hospital. I got the concept. But I was the guy who was helping other people with grief and loss. And when that happened, you know, on the ground, on the ground, brutal. And I eventually had to think about like everything I've taught. I think I have to do what I've been telling people.

I think I need to go to a grief counselor. I think I need to go to a group of medicine. And oh my gosh, I was someone who was like, okay, go to a grief group. It took me three times to get to a grief group. I mean, something that someone who was like, okay, go to a grief group. It took me three times to get to a grief group. I mean, something that I thought was like not the big issue was impossible to do. And then I had a cap on, took my contacts out, was wearing glasses, and I had to sit at a table with my books five feet away and I couldn't go, that's me. I'm the grief expert. I had to be the dad.

And so I would watch myself and I would go, yeah, you're in denial. You can't believe it. Oh, yep, there's your anger. I mean, I sort of monitored my process. The grief expert watched the father go through it. And then Kubler-Ross and I had always talked about this idea of people think there's a finality to acceptance. Like I'm going to be done. And you know, when people say, how long will my sister grieve? How long will my husband grieve?

I'm always like, well, how long is the person dead? Because if they're dead for a long time, you're going to grieve for a long time, but not always with pain. Right. With more love eventually. And by the way, I always want to say to people, grief is not just death. I mean, it's- Sure.

Breakups, divorce, job loss, everything else. But when I began to go, is this it? Am I just going to accept this? That's it. Okay, I'm going to accept it. It's like it wasn't enough. And I picked up some papers that I had wrote about meaning and I was like, that's not going to help. I threw those down, you know? And then about a week later, I read them again and they gave me a little cushion to my pain. And I went back and I read Viktor Frankl's work, Man's Search for Meaning. I reread it, and I thought, what's the disconnection? There's some disconnection that I've heard over the years from people in grief. And as I started to talk about it, it became so apparent.

Everyone was like, well, David, there's no meaning in a child's death. There's no meaning in a murder. There's no meaning in a betrayal, in a car wreck, in a divorce, in a pandemic. And I realized, oh, the meaning isn't in the horrible thing. The meaning is in us. It's what we do afterwards.

And that was a light bulb for me and so many other people. And I was so honored that the Kubler-Ross family gave me permission to add a sixth stage. And I got to add this sixth stage, but it also enabled me to write an update and go, everyone still not linear, still not adding a mandatory step. But it does feel like we're a generation that didn't just want to go, yeah, accept it. Like, is there something more here? And I think meaning goes along with all those stories we tell.

Do you feel like part of your tragic story, the way you've derived meaning from it and not why you went through it, but what happened by going through it was your deeper understanding of these things and then your ability to come up with an additional layer of how one thinks about it, which has the potential to benefit thousands, millions of people far after your time here. And I think there's a moment we go through consciously or unconsciously. And I really thought about it. I live on this cute little street, little suburb,

and I could picture a future where the teenagers on their bike would be riding by and the new kid would be there and he'd go, hey, what's the house with the cobwebs, is it haunted? And they would go, no, it's a grief expert and then his own son died. Like I could see, I could never come out of the house now. I could choose that, I could be done. And I think after all our tragedies and setbacks and horrible things in our life, There's a conscious unconscious decision of, do I live again? And beyond the do I live again, my meaning that I really thought about is my son

David loved my work. I think it would be really heartbreaking for him to think that his life or death somehow constricted it. Yeah. So then I had to look at, well, if it didn't constrict it, it could keep it the same or it could expand it. Yeah. And I think that's the growth. Yeah. That's the not just going through it, but growing through it.

And growth is part of life. And growth is painful, by the way. We sort of glamorize it. Brutal, brutal. Even just a kid growing an inch is straining their body, the amount of calories they have to consume. Growth is constructive, but also a destructive process. Right, right.

And it's part of life and a painful part of life, but an even more painful part is if we resist the growth. It takes a lot of energy to become the person who never leaves the house again. And that is a real fight against reality. I mean, so many times when I'm working with someone, they'll go, it's over, it's just not continuing. And I'll go, could I touch your wrist?

And they'll go, sure. And I'll go, your heart's actually continuing still. Would you consider tonight going home in the midst of your life as over, it's done, there's that checking your toenails. I think they're still growing through this. And so like when we begin to realize, oh, I can naturally grow.

Yeah. And it's very easy to sort of go, but bereaved parent. I mean, how unusual, unnatural is that? Well, you know, we only have to go back before penicillin to go, well, every parent was a bereaved parent. Like one out of five children? Yeah. Every parent was a bereaved parent.

Right. And so I can go, I was the grief, like, why? Why? And then I can get to, well, why not? Yeah. Why should you be exempt? Was I exempt? Yeah.

Why would I be exempt? Right. And it has made me go deeper with people. Yeah. And I would have loved to have taken a class instead of had to say goodbye to my son, but there wasn't an available class. Right. You know, it's like,

this is the lessons that you learn through life. And it's not to say that these are, you know, we can't reduce this. Oh, what's the lesson? Oh, your tire was flat. What's the lesson? It's, you know, it's more than that. It's, you know.

Yeah, I was fascinated because I love Victor Franco. My grandmother gave me a copy of it when I was a kid. Actually, no, my grandmother had given my aunt a copy and then she had passed away when I was very young. And so my aunt gave me that copy when I graduated from high school. And I remember reading it and it's just, it's an incredible book to watch this man

who went through all this stuff, not only not be broken, but sort of thrive and become this great teacher. But during the pandemic actually, so it sort of slipped under the radar, they found like a few other lectures and some letters that he had written. And so they put out this new edition

and it's called Yes to Life in Spite of Everything, it's a collection from Victor Frankel. But what I was most struck by reading it was you assume, I think from Man's Search for Meaning, that he was this sort of superhuman who just wasn't broken by this terrible thing that happened. And he came out of the camps as Victor Frankel. But you read some of the letters that he wrote,

like in 45 and 46 and 47, and he's like, why should I go on? This is horrible. You know, he's really struggling under what he should have been struggling under. I mean, it was unimaginable. And so the idea gives you another layer on it to realize, oh, Victor Frankel had to work to become Viktor Frankl.

If he just spent time in four concentration camps and it was like water off a duck's back, what's the lesson there? That's not how the rest of us are going to go. So to understand, oh, he really struggled, and then, yeah, he faced what you were talking about, which is this choice between the expected, ordinary, totally justifiable path of despair and guilt and pain or the path of turning that suffering into meaning and that he chose that path and then it required work and commitment and it was a process, it's actually much more beautiful and relatable. To me, just what you said, relatable, it makes it more connecting that otherwise, it's the movie of the week version of getting through life. And when I hear someone who practically gave me a career and was an amazing teacher to me

was Mother Teresa. She struggled? Oh, well, of course she did. You don't become Mother Teresa without a struggle. You don't become Victor Franco without, it's not just the external struggle, but the internal one. And many times that's a huge fight that happens It's not just the external struggle, but the internal one. And many times that's a huge fight that happens after the tragedy.

Yeah. If it's a natural disposition that you're born with, you don't really admire someone for being tall. You admire them as the Stokes talk about if you have someone with strong muscles, you want to see what they can lift, right? You want to see how they got them. And I think, yeah, if it's this natural disposition or some gift from above, it's still impressive, but it's not the same. RL And I think there's a myth that we think And I think there's a myth that we think everyone doesn't have those struggles. Like everyone, the tall, amazing, whatever your ideal version of a human being is, that

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and you have one of the most unforgettable legacies in royal history. Follow even the royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge even the royals ad free right now on Wondery Plus. The question I get the most is people will say, you know, I've been practicing Stoicism,

I'm interested in Stoicism, and then I just lost someone I love. What do the Stoics have to say about this? And you might think that the Stoics being invulnerable and conquering their emotions just sort of shrug off grief. So I think it's so fitting then that Seneca's most beautiful writing, he writes these series of essays called Consolations, and they are him walking people he loved through grief. One is his own mother when he's exiled. He writes her this letter about how she can deal with losing her son, not for good, but this vast distance separate. And it's amazing how patient and kind and understand. Like if he was the Stoic as we understand that word to be, he would have said, get over it, it happens.

There's a famous Stoic line, a man loses his wife and children to this invading army, and he supposedly shrugs and says, you know, I knew they were mortal when I met them, right? That's what we, I think, think Stoicism is. But then when you read these consolation essays, you go, oh no, that's not who the Stoics were at all. They understood you had had these profound emotions.

And the idea was how do you process and work on them so they don't take over and destroy your life, which Seneca talks about as sort of the ultimate betrayal of the person that you're grieving. You talk about this idea of sort of a loving remembrance. He's writing to this daughter of a friend who had died and he says, you know, I don't think your father would want to hear that his memory moves you to tears and despair. I mean, no one wants you to be happy that they're gone,

but if their memory doesn't inspire and uplift you and make you smile, I think most of us would go like, oh, we screwed up. But there is a timing to that. Yes. There is a, you know, to say to someone, don't cry, they'd want you to be happy, means, wait, I have to skip the feelings. And you know, a couple of things I'd love to say about

that is, and I'm sure you would say the Stoics, I've heard you talk about this before, that one of the things that gets in our way is our comparing mind. And that we go, oh, well, wait a minute. He's a bereaved parent. My girlfriend just broke up with me. That's not real grief. Or the dog just died. Or it's a divorce or it's betrayal. Or I lost my job.

And people always want to know, that's one of the big questions, like, what's the worst grief? And my answer is yours. Yours. Like I can't know what it's like to be Ryan with the suffering you've gone through, nor can you ever know me. And we can talk about it, we can share about it, but the only thing we can do is grieve our own grief. And the comparison, I always say, when you're comparing, you're in your mind,

you don't have a broken mind, you have a broken heart. And I know the Stoics have talked about comparison. Yeah, yeah, you can't, one of the things Seneca talks about in his things too, is he's like, you can't deceive grief. And so the idea of telling yourself, oh, my grief is small because so-and-so is grieving their entire family after an accident.

I've just got one death. Yeah. There is a logic to that and it might help you get a little bit of perspective. It's not a math equation that if you solve for it, it disappears. It's still there. The other piece to this is feelings. I think feelings are something that our generation has run from. I think about, has run from. And I think about, you would never play a video game

and only look at half the screen. You would never read every other page of a book. And I look at it that feelings are information, feelings are data, and they're not facts. And so to take that in and go, oh, these can actually lead me where I need to go. Yeah. And they can give me information about this. And I think we're a generation now that we go, oh, I'm so angry. Wait, anger, inappropriate, bad. Let me throw that feeling up. Sad. that's wimpy, behind me.

And we're living with like a thousand half-felt feelings instead of, let me just feel it and go to the next one. Yeah, you can't just stuff it down and assume that it's not gonna come back out somewhere else. Right, it will find you. It will find you at not the greatest moment, even worse than the moment it first comes up. I imagine that's very common in your work.

People who have put off grieving about someone or something for decades, and then some other event or another similar loss, suddenly it comes back up, or they can't figure out why they're sad every June. In the middle of the wedding, why before my wedding would the grief come up? Well, it's been there. You deferred it with interest for 20 years.

Right, right, right, and here it is. Cause you can't, I tell people, you know, they're like, I'm just in survival mode. I'm like, oh, don't worry, you can't lose grief. You can't lose grief. It's going to find you again, not to worry, not to worry. You're gonna have to deal with it at some point. Or as the bumper sticker will say, it will deal with you.

Yeah, yes. At the same time, you know, Seneca in his grief essays, he's talking about this problem we have when we grieve, where we remove our, he says, we remove ourselves from amongst the living. So because our pain is so real and overwhelming and we remove ourselves from society as if everyone is in dealing with grief.

And that is one of the unique experiences, in some ways not unique, that when you lose someone or something, or you do manage to be brave enough to be vulnerable about what you're feeling, is you realize, oh, everyone's feeling this way. And that oftentimes, people you know very well have been going through some terrible tragedy or pain that they just didn't want to burden you with. And you're both depriving yourself of this

ability to connect and help each other. Yeah. and strangely that goes back to the timing of it all, that there is a time in grief to be really self-reflective, a healthy self-centered, a real self-care, and you sort of shut out the world and it's all about your pain. When you're in enormous pain, there is nothing else. Then there comes a time, it's different for every single person. There is a reinvestment. There is a re-engaging of the world. And sometimes we miss that. And the challenge becomes, you know, I say to people,

because I've been in situations where people like, no one's grief counts but mine. And they are the most horribly tormented, unhappy person. And, you know, I often talk about what happens, what do we call a cell that goes, I don't care about anyone else, I care about me. We call that malignant cancer. There comes a time, a few years after grief, if you're still like, I don't care about anyone else, this happened to me, it becomes malignant in your thinking versus going, oh my gosh,

there have been people suffering around me all this time. I didn't get it before. And like, oh, I'm even more connected now. I'm even more connected. You know, there's a million moments and even I, being a grief expert, had them like, you know, the day that like my son had been gone six months, I'm like, people better call me. Like, it's the six month mark. How could they not know what I'm saying? How could they? And like, I'm like, oh, was I calling people? That's like, oh, you know, you don't realize what it's like for that breakup, that divorce, that betrayal, that death, until you're in it.

And then you're like, oh, how unaware I was of this pain that every, you know, I always say we come from a long line of dead people. Like every ancestor died. Everyone has died. We also come from a long line of survivors people. Like every ancestor died. Everyone has died. We also come from a long line of survivors though. Do you know what I mean? Like we come from a long line of people who lost people and grieved and carried on or we wouldn't be here. Correct. Correct. And a lot of times people will tell me, you don't understand. I can't go on and

I'll go, can you tell me about someone in your family that had someone die? And they're like, okay, well, that's like out of the blue question, but sure. My grandmother, tell me, oh my gosh, she raised me. She was amazing. What was, wait, she had that death and she continued? Yeah, your fondest memories are of this person

who celebrated your birthday. Yeah, who outlived memories are of this person who- Celebrated your birthday. Yeah, who outlived their spouse by 30 years. And managed to give you an amazing memorable birthday party. Yes. Yeah, even though they would have been feeling the exact same things that you're feeling. You said people ask about what's the most painful kind of grief. And you said they're all equal, but I- They're not all equal, but it's always your. Sure. And it's interesting,

we're always on the edge of our own pain. It's interesting, I've got a huge online group of people who are in grief. And I'll often say like, oh my gosh, you're here? It's week two? Oh gosh, your spouse died, your child died, your parent died. Tell me this pain, it must be enormous.

And they tell me about the pain and I'll go, I'm just curious. Like let's go to the crazy zero to 10. And they're like, I'm waiting for them to get sentences out. They can't put three words together through their tears and they'll go, scale of one to 10, I'm a thousand. And then, you know, I'll talk to them at six months or a year. They're articulate, they're insightful, they're completing their sentences and I'll go, what's your pain at? And they'll go a thousand. I mean, we're always at the edge of our worst pain on that day. No one ever goes, oh, David,

I'm now at a three and a half. I'm now at a five. I mean, this pain we're feeling today is actually our worst usually. That makes sense. I was just thinking, so people read Mark Sturlus' meditations and sometimes the knock on Mark Stur's is that it's depressing. And lately just been saying, you're right. Do you know what Mark Sprele's life was? He lost his father at a young age. He gets taken from his childhood home and he becomes the emperor and he buries six children. Five children live to adulthood, six die. So of 11 children, more than half of them die. He lives through a plague, he lives through a flood, he loses his wife.

How does this guy get out of bed every morning? I mean, like it's depressing because life can be depressing, but also when you realize that he did get out of bed every morning, that he did keep going. It's this testament, profound testament to the resilience and the perseverance of the human spirit. And so that's what human beings do is that they move through grief and loss and keep going. And one of the things I put in this is that I put the hero's journey in there. And you know, I want people to understand we all go through those horrible dark nights.

And how mapped out it is that like in the beginning of the journey, you're sure there's no end. With a refusal to the call, the refusal to the call is the denial. Right, right, exactly. And you go into that and there's, you know, the enemy is in the hell. I mean, it's all, and one of the things I did, cause I mean, so many people don't know the hero's journey is I literally go, all right, you've seen it in Star Wars and the Hunger Games.

Every great story ever. I did like, here's the hero's journey. Here's Star Wars hero's journey, cause you can go, oh yeah, Luke's parents died and all that. And then you can go to, let's map out yours. Right. And here's the hero's journey. At the end of it, my son is still dead. And I'm forever changed.

Yeah. And I'm forever changed. Yeah. I'm still me. And each of us is the hero of our own life, of what we've gone through. And you just don't often get that until your dark night. And everyone else has been going through theirs too. Yeah.

There is something though about being a parent that I think makes you uniquely vulnerable. Joan Didion, you know, this is her table. Is it? And these are her chairs. Wow. Like she sat at this table with the fam. There's a New York Times picture of that family, the one that was in the course of 18 months taken from her sitting at this table in these chairs.

And she said something about how being a parent is like being a hostage to fortune. Just like life has something on you now. And I think that's what keeps you up at night as a parent is like that something could happen and you don't have control of it. I remember when I became a parent, someone like I had this nightmare, I forgot what it was. And someone said to me, oh, you only have two nightmares became a parent, someone like I had this nightmare, I forgot what it was. And someone said to me, oh, you only have two nightmares as a parent, you die or they die. And I'm like, really? And it's like, well, that does become it. And listen, I love Joan Didion. I love when I often have people watch the documentary on her. And it begins with like, you know,

she's a robust, elderly, giggling lady that you're like, oh, what a fabulous life she's had and this person, that person. And then you hear about it and you go, wait a minute, she's been through that, wait, that happened? How is she still standing? How does it not break this frail, tiny person? Yeah, it's unreal.

It's interesting, the history in things. I wrote part of the original book on Truman Capote's table and I'm like, is anything coming through? But I'm like, I don't want it to be gossipy or tacky. It turned out it was just a table. How did you find his table? I have a friend who was great friends with Joanne Carson, who was a good friend of his and had his desk. Yeah, there's an energy to things. There's an energy and yet there's also the stories. Like, what's going to happen if I write at this table?

Yeah, nothing, it's just a table. It's this table. Yeah, it's nothing, it's just a table. It's a table. Yeah, her story is so, it's sobering. You know, she opens, she has this book, Blue Nights, and she opened, she's like at her daughter's wedding, and she and her husband are walking out, and she says, you know, neither of us, no one could have understood watching this scene

from the street, that within 18 months, everyone but the mother of the bride would be dead. And just how life can come at you very, very, very fast. It doesn't matter how successful you are, talented you are, how protected you are. That's to me what that long fellow, he says, it doesn't matter how well protected your fireside is, there's an empty chair at everyone's living room. None of us are exempt from it. RL And we so get that when we're in it. To me, one of the practices, can I get it when I'm not in it? When I'm in the grocery store and that person is struggling to find like the change in their wallet or purse, you know, and you're like, you knew we were at the checkout here,

how did this surprise you? And yet, oh my gosh, did their spouse die a week ago? Yeah. Are they like dealing with a new diagnosis? I mean, you really have no clue what anyone around us is going through in their struggles. Yeah. And to have that new awareness suddenly goes, can I give you a quarter? Yeah, right. Or just leave them alone.

Be patient and like send them love and wish them well. Right. Yeah, there's a practice in meditations that I try to do. Marx really says he gets it from Epictetus, but he says, as you tuck your child in at night, say to yourself, they will not make it through till the morning. And I think he's doing what you're saying, which is not, he's not trying to say like detach from this person. I think he's saying, why are you rushing through bedtime? You know what I mean? Like when my kid wants to get out- That's the hard thing to do. That's the hard thing to do. I mean, I say it a little differently that for me, you know, cause here's that thing about your life must be so depressing. And I think about, all right, let me just go there.

What if it turns out today's my last day? Yeah. I don't know what there's a car accident later. There's a plane crash. I don't know what it's my last day. So if I take this in and go, wait, what if it's my last day? I only have two choices. I need to excuse myself right now because I have to go

apologize to a lot of people. I got to go make some amends. Or if I've been living currently, what? So if this is my last day, wait a minute, this is my last podcast. Well, if this is my last podcast, I mean, let's make this really good. I mean, I want to take in today. I want to like grab a little more from today than I normally would. And so what if I really try to make this day count even more, and then I don't die tonight? Great. I have a whole other day, and tomorrow it's going to be another great day. Well, that's what I think about. So it's, you know, your child's not gonna make it through

till morning. And then when you're laying there, and then they're like, I need water. And you're like, you don't need water. You're just making this up because you're trying to extend bedtime. You're like, oh yeah, I wanna extend bedtime also. What do I care?

Why am I trying to, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do that's better than this? What am I gonna do? If your child is like, these are precious moments, let me like take it in. Yeah. And we're like, there's a destination, sleep. Yeah, I'm like, I have an email to respond to or whatever.

I, it's, what am I gonna do? And don't we all? I'm gonna go watch Netflix. And don't we all? You know, what I'm trying to do after this is laughably unimportant compared to this. But you can fool yourself for that. If you allow your mind to do what we naturally,

what's a much more comfortable thought, which is you have thousands more of this. So this one's not that important, but you don't know that. And you don't know that. Yeah. And you don't know that. And if you let that in, it actually doesn't depress you. It makes you live more.

Yeah. It makes you, I mean, one of the things that was a crazy thing that I experienced and I think sort of says it all is I would do before the pandemic, you know, 30 cities and all that and be in like hotel meeting room after one. And I would be in a hotel meeting room and there'd be a few hundred people and next door is the realtors and down the halls the nurses around the corner is the, you know, rotary club. And the staff would say on more than one occasion

at the end of the day, what were you teaching? Yeah. And I go, why do you ask? And they go, because your group was laughing the most. And they'd be like, I'd say grief, what kind of grief? And I would go, that kind of grief. And what I think it's hard for the outsider to know is the people in that room who had been through all kinds of tragedies or helped people with tragedies absolutely had a longer, wider bandwidth for sorrow. But they also had a longer,

wider bandwidth for laughter, for joy. You have to be able to laugh. In the ancient world there were sort of two models. There was Democritus and Heraclitus. And the idea was Democritus cried over the absurdity and the tragedy of existence and Heraclitus laughed at it. And which one are you going to be? Right. In some of Seneca's last words, so he gets the emperor, he runs afoul of Nero and Nero sends this hit squad to kill him. And his friends are there and his wife is there and they're all crying, you know, he's gonna die. And he chokes, why are you crying over this?

He says, when the whole of life requires tears. He's just making, he's like, why is this so sad? Life is sad, but he's making fun of the absurdity of it. And there is something I think about, about humor and laughter that only people who have experienced profound sadness and darkness truly understand. So many times people go, wow, you really have a gift for, you know, death and grief. And I go, I really have a gift for humor.

Because the truth is, I mean, I don't think you could learn that much if I'm like, oh, let's keep you in the pain. I mean, humor is so important and I'm not ever laughing at anyone's grief or their sorrows, but isn't life ridiculous? I mean, it becomes really funny, the absurd things that happen. Yeah. Lincoln had this profound sadness and then also this sort of body sense of humor. And I think you need the two to balance each other out.

How do you think losing a child, what do you think that brings you to say to a parent? Like, how would that inform one's time with their children. It's hard because I don't want to take away anyone's human experience. And I'm so glad I got to have and still have with my older son all those human experiences. And I think about it like on one hand, I've done a lot of work with cancer organization near me. And I remember, you know, one woman saying after she got into remission when she was about to die, she said, you know, I get up every morning and I just take in the sunrise. I went, that's amazing. I mean, I'm just ignoring it every single day. And then I remember seeing her like a year later and I go, how are you doing? And she's like, I'm doing great, my health's great.

And I said, how are the sunrises? She goes, ah, you've seen one, you've seen them all. And I mean, I think we try to operate from the profoundness of all this, but we're just having this human experience. There's still a day-to-dayness also. There's a day-to-dayness. And you know, there's times someone will go, my child didn't get into the call, da-to-dayness also. There's a day-to-dayness. And there's times someone will go,

my child didn't get into the call, da-da-da, and I'm like hearing him, I'm like, that's not a problem. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a problem. And sometimes I say it, and sometimes I realize, well, that is their biggest problem. Yeah. And maybe they're open to a different perspective,

and maybe they're not. Well, it's like we all know what we're supposed to eat, and then we get hungry or tired and we eat something different. So yeah, you're right. You have these profound insights and then you're still a human being who, you know, is prey to all the things that human beings do. And I remember in that same cancer organization, someone shared with me, we were talking about

what if you found out like, you know, it was your last week, your last day. And one person said, I put another load of laundry in. And I love the humanness of that, that like, okay, I guess I'm just going to do the next thing that's in front of me, even if this turns out to be my last day. You know who Montaigne is, the French essayist? He says, I hope death finds me planting cabbages. Wow. Just he understood what Cicero said that to philosophize is to learn how to die.

But the idea was that you get this awareness, you get this understanding, you have these insights, and then you just go about your regular life. He's like, I don't, you know, not dreading it, but also not like sort of overwrought and overprepared for it. You learn all this stuff. And then in a sense, if you understand

you could lose your kids at any moment, there's some unhealthy version where you just cling them so tight to you because you're afraid of always losing them that you end up losing them. It's this idea of understanding it and then taking them to soccer practice and sending them off to school

and just living a regular life with them. Well, and I think a huge lesson is for me, fear doesn't stop death. Fear stops life. So you get in too much fear and it's everything. I mean, you could lose your kids, you could lose your spouse. I mean, that's like true to your job. I mean, everything. And so do we tighten up? your job. I mean everything. And so do we tighten up? Do we go into fear? Do we shut down? Or do we go, oh my goodness, that's right. I was going to lose everything anyway. I guess I'm just going to relax into this while it's here and enjoy it. Yeah, there's a balance to that, I think. And to go between that humanness and the reality of loss, that it's always around us.

I always say death is like no further than six inches. I mean, something's around us that just could electrocute. I mean, something could happen in any given moment. And okay, I'm just gonna live. And just like, I don't want this long, long wind down of my life. I mean, I'd like to be caught in the act. I'm just like-

Planting cabbages. Planting a cabbage and boom, who knew? Like, would he have planted a cabbage? Yeah, probably would have. I wouldn't have done another load of laundry. Yeah, that's beautiful. You wanna check out some books? Sure.

All right, and then I got something for you. Not that you need any more reminders, but we do these for Daily Stoic. I thought you might like that. Wow. It's a challenge coin, but it's, so the hourglass is time, the skull is death, and then the flower is life.

That's the idea of memento mori, which the Stoic said we should be saying to ourselves constantly. And Seneca's point too, which I think is beautiful, he says, don't think of death as this thing that happens in the future, but as something that's happening right now. So not even in what you were saying that it could happen right now, but that it is because instead of seeing death as this singular final thing, we want to see the time that passes as being dead. And so in fact, you're dying all

the time. Every day. Yeah. Every day. And you know, we have this moment, oh, nope, that's gone. Yeah. It's gone. It's dead. There's a new one. And can we take that in? And it's so true, every day is going to die. Yeah. I mean, I'm never going to be this age again. I mean, sometimes I'll literally, when I'm trying, you know, there's so much in meditation, I come to the present moment. I mean, sometimes I'll do like a time travel pretending like, what if I was like in the future and I came back to this day? I'd be like, wow, take in the room a little more. And wow, like you're sitting with Ryan and like, you know, in the books on the wall,

I'd be like, wasn't this day amazing? You know, how many of us go, if I could go back and look at that day again, well, take another look at this day here. This is an amazing day. And maybe not, it could be the day that sucks in your life. Well, take another look at this day here. This is an amazing day. Yeah. Maybe not. It could be the day that sucks in your life.

Sure. And can you also look at that as part of this experience? And also to realize, yeah, there's nothing that keeps a parent up more than the idea of losing their children. But like I've already lost my babies, I lost my toddler, you know, they're gone. I'll never get that one again, because now they're older. Grief is empty nest. When they go to college, you're gonna lose them again.

I mean, and you know, our spouses and our girlfriends and everyone else, and it's okay. And it's all gonna happen someday, but we have this and we have now in this moment and that's what's amazing about it. That's a beautiful place to stop, I think. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes,

that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on Wondery.com slash survey.