The Daily Stoic - Failure Doesn’t Define You—Neither Does Success | Always The Same

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women help you learn from them. to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visitdailystoic.com. success. Of course he was disappointed. It had been a long and hard fall. He descended from West Point to second lieutenant during the Mexican-American War, but now Ulysses S. Grant was selling

Starting point is 00:01:12 firewood by the side of the road. He must have hoped that no one would recognize him and his heart would have sank when Simon Buckner and old school and war buddy did. Could God, Grant, he burst. What are you doing? But Grant decided he would not be ashamed. I am solving the problem of poverty, he replied. Grant knew what the Stoics knew, that outside circumstances don't say anything about us at all, that it didn't matter, as Epictetus said, what we bear, only how we bear it. Grant was feeding his family. He was doing honest work. What was so bad about that? After all, Cleanthes was a lowly water carrier in Athens, and proud of it. Now, had Grant been caught stealing to support his drinking habit? That would have been different. Or if he'd accept it,

Starting point is 00:01:59 a Confederate commission because the pay was better. Again, that would be different. As I talked about in my episode with Ron Chernow on the Daily Stoke podcast, who wrote one of his best biographies about Grant, Grant understood this so-called menial work of selling firewood didn't say anything about him. What he cared about was making an honest living and providing for his family. The position didn't define him, and not only was this position temporary, but a few years later, he would be become general of the Union Army, and a few years after that, President of the United States. And yet again, Grant would refuse to let those high positions define him either. As Marcus Reelius commanded himself, we must accept it without arrogance and let it go with indifference.

Starting point is 00:02:47 Like Grant, he saw that success and failure were meaningless. They were imposters. A rock thrown in the air gains nothing by going up, he said, and nothing by falling down. What matters is who we are. What matters is the character. we live by. I feel like we just got our Halloween decorations up, and now the next holiday season is here. It's hard to believe it, but Thanksgiving is nearly here. We're big at decorating here at the holiday household, as you can imagine, and Wayfair can help make holiday prep easy by having all your home needs in one place.

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Starting point is 00:05:11 the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash Daily Stoic. Just go to Indeed.com slash Daily Stoic right now to support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash daily stoic terms and conditions apply. If you're hiring, do it the right way with Indeed. Always the same. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. Think by way of example on the times of Vespasian. And you'll see all these things marrying, raising children, falling ill, dying, wars, holiday feasts, commerce, farming,

Starting point is 00:05:48 flattering, pretending, suspecting, scheming, praying that others die, grumbling over one's lot, falling in love, amassing fortunes, lusting after office and power. Now that life of theirs is dead and gone, the times of Trajan again the same. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 4.32. And then the meditation. Ernest Hemingway opens his book, The Sun also rises with a Bible verse. One generation pathus, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. The sun also rises. and the sun goeth down, and resteth to the place where he arose. It was this passage, his fascinating editor, Maxwell Perkins, who I urge you to read about. Perkins would say that it contained all the wisdom of the ancient world.

Starting point is 00:06:43 And what wisdom is that? One of the most striking things about history is just how long human beings have been doing what they do. Though certain attitudes and practices have come and gone, what's left are people. Living, dying, loving, fighting, crying, and laughing. Breathless media reports or popular books often perpetuate the belief that we've reached the apex of humanity or that this time things are really different. The irony is that people have believed that for centuries. Strong people have to resist this notion. They know that with few exceptions, things are the same as they've always been and always will be.

Starting point is 00:07:22 you're just like the people who came before you and you're but a brief stopover until the people just like you who will come after the earth abides forever but we will come and go and i mean i think meditations itself is a remarkable demonstration of this probably not accidentally right all the things that marcus is talking about complaining about worrying about you know seizing on are immensely familiar and accessible to all of us, right? 2,000 years ago, you know, sometime in the year, let's say, 160 AD, Marcus struggles to get out of bed and writes a passage about how he likes to huddle under the blankets and stay warm. Exactly the same, right?

Starting point is 00:08:11 You think about the struggles Marcus Aurelius has with comidus. Maybe that's what you're going through right now. You think of Seneca trying to contain Nero telling himself, You know, I'm one of the good guys. I'm one of the adults in the room. And you think about how politically people in the Capitol, which is named after Capitoline Hill, senators, right, same position as people like Seneca had, were telling themselves about the current president, right? The same thing over and over and over and over again. People are people places are places. I did a meditation on this. We did this road trip and we stopped in Tombstone, Arizona, which. you know, it's the site of the gunfighted O.K. Corral. And what's fascinating, you walk down the streets of Tombstone. And this is a place that's burned to the ground, have been rebuilt, to look historic for the most parts. Some of the buildings actually are pretty old. But the point is, these bars, what stickers do they have in the window?

Starting point is 00:09:07 The sticker is new. That wasn't a technology in 1880 or whatever. But they've got these stickers in the window. What do the stickers say? You can't carry a handgun inside this establishment, right? Same sticker I have on the, you know, front of the painted porch. But in the 1880s, that's what the gunfight at the OK corral was. about. It was about whether people could openly carry guns in town. I'm not making a Second

Starting point is 00:09:33 Amendment argument here. I'm saying that people were fighting and arguing about the exact same thing, just as the Earps had moved to Tombstone, Arizona. Why? To make their fortune, to make a name for themselves, to have a better life, the same reason that maybe you're moving to Arizona or Austin or Europe, right? It doesn't matter. People are people and they've always been doing the same things. And I think what's so beautiful and reassuring but also humbling about Stoic philosophy is these reminders that not that much has changed, that the hardware issues remain the same, the software issues remain the same, despite all the updates and attempts to fix the bugs. So we can calm down a little bit, right? People are people, places, or places, history is the same

Starting point is 00:10:25 thing happening over and over and over again. Time, as Matthew McCona Hay's character says, in true detective, quoting Nietzsche, time is a flat circle. It's beautiful, as I said, haunting, humbling, all these things at the same time. And it's something we can't lose track of, and it's something we have to think about constantly. And when I hold meditations, that's what I think of. I've actually got the leather edition right here in my hands. Since I got my first copy of meditation. I've been going through that one. Like, I have a very worn copy has lots of notes in it. I went through and I've been rereading it. It's on my nightstand. As I've been going through and rereading it, what strikes me most is that I'm still making notes in the same spots about the same

Starting point is 00:11:12 things, just as other people have been doing for thousands of years. Maybe you have Seneca on your nightstand just as Jefferson had Seneca on his nightstand when he died, just as, you know, Cato died holding a copy of Socrates, right? It's a timeless tradition we're a part of both intentionally and unintentionally. And there's something beautiful and terrifying in that. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoog 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.

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Starting point is 00:13:01 We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium and we are offering a limited time discount of 20% off your first year.

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The Daily Stoic - Failure Doesn’t Define You—Neither Does Success | Always The Same

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