The Daily Stoic - History Obliterates In Every Picture It Paints | Why You Need To Read Meditations By Marcus Aurelius

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

The Stoics weren’t just leaders and philosophers, they were also parents, spouses, and friends who experienced joy, who fell in love, who cherished the beauty of the world around them.🎉 Celebrate Marcus Aurelius' Birthday this month by reading Meditations with us and the Daily Stoic community. On April 26th, 1905 years after the day of his birth, Ryan Holiday will host an invite-only LIVE Q&A to talk about all things Marcus Aurelius and Meditations.Get 20% off with a Meditations BOOK & GUIDE bundle. Join the LIVE Meditations Q&A with Ryan Holiday by purchasing before April 26th!Get all our Meditations offering and learn more at our official Meditations Collection at dailystoic.com/meditations today. 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch 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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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 to 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, visit dailysteilig.com. History obliterates in every picture it paints. It is remarkable and very, very lucky that the book survives. Imagine it was never written for publication.

It could have been destroyed by a family member. It could have been lost to fire or to time as all the writings of Zeno and Chrysippus were as nearly half the writings of Seneca were. It could have been banned by the church or tucked away and forgotten in some archive never to be seen again. So that Meditations Survives is a miracle of history.

We have in the pages of this little book, the thoughts of the most powerful man in the world. We have him ruminating on how to deal with difficult people, how to overcome obstacles, how to face the inevitability of death. And we have him doing this for his own personal edification, not for posterity or for performance. But we could also say that this is all incredibly misleading as a result. And in fact that many people have been misled by meditations. They think that Marcus Aurelius is depressing. They think

Stoicism is dark and joyless, even violent. But what is written in the pages of Meditations is not who Marcus Aurelius was as a person, as a friend, as a husband, or a father. We have to remember that in Meditations, we see only what he was struggling with, what he needed reminders of, of what he was trying to cling to in a difficult moment. What was published in Meditations, you could argue, what survives in most of the Stoic writings, obliterates the full and complex human life behind those words. Because the Stoics weren't just leaders and philosophers, they were also parents and spouses and friends who experienced joy, who fell in love, who cherished the beauty of the world around them. Marcus Aurelius begins his meditations not with stoic doctrine, but with gratitude for

all the people in his life and what they taught him. The whole concept of writing meditation, said Donald Robertson, one of Marcus' best biographers when he was on the Daily Stoic Podcast. He said that it's about following through on this thing he remembers his mother saying when he was younger, which is to work on his character, to improve his mind and not just his external behavior. And this is one of the many reasons why Meditations hasn't just survived,

but has endured all these years. And this month we're celebrating what a miracle that is by helping you live it. We're calling April Marcus Aurelius month here, meditations month, because it's Marcus's 1905th birthday. And so we've just been doing this deep dive into meditations. We have this awesome step-by-step guide, sort of a course about meditations.

If you've been interested in reading the book, bring me doing a live Q and A as part of that course on April 26, which is for everyone who has purchased it. I did a new forward to the paperback edition of Meditations and the hard cover, which you can grab at store.dailystoic.com. And then of course we have our leather bound edition of Meditations. If you want one that will stay on the test time and you can bundle all that stuff together.

I'll link all of that in today's show notes or just head over to dailystoic.com slash meditations. Why should you read a book that was published thousands of years ago by a tyrant, by a person who had an arranged marriage, who was worshiped as a God? Why should you read a book that wasn't even written in the first place?

Why should you read a book that wasn't even written in the first place? Why should you read a book that wasn't even written in the first place? Why should you read a book that wasn't even written in the first place? Why should you read a book that wasn't even written in the first place?

Why should you read a book that wasn't even written in the first place? Why should you read a book that wasn't even written in the first place? Why should you read a book that wasn't even written in the first place? Why should you read a book that wasn't even written years ago by a tyrant, by a person who had an arranged marriage, who was worshipped as a god. Why should you read a book that wasn't even written for you to read? Private thoughts written in Greek in a tent on the front lines of war-torn Europe? What does this possibly have to do with any of us? These are all good questions to ask about Marcus Aurelius' meditations. And then you open it and what you see is that this incredibly specific book,

a book written for himself, specific beyond specific, becomes one of the most universal and relatable things ever produced by a human being. It is a work of philosophy, but not in the abstract sense. It is a work of a man trying to fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. And this was a book that I was introduced to as a young man. I bought it in college. I sat there reading it at a table like this in my college apartment. And I felt like I was just hit by a pile of bricks. I didn't know this is what philosophy could be.

And so in today's episode, I want to tell you why you absolutely need to read this book, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, one of the most enduring works of philosophy ever produced, one of the most singular works of literature ever produced. And it's a book that if you let it, I promise you will change your life. One reason you should read Marx's Meditations is that there is really nothing like it. It is quite possibly the only document of its kind ever made. It is the private thoughts of the world's most powerful man, but he's not performing for an audience. He's writing to himself, trying to not

be corrupted by power, to not be imperialized, as he says in Meditations, to not be dyed purple by the cloak of the Emperor. As I said, he's trying to fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. And so, you know, most philosophy books are the philosopher writing to the student, writing to the world, writing to the world, writing for the record. What Marcus Aurelius is doing is journaling. Meditations is much closer to a commonplace book. Notes, reminders, it's filled with little quotes, little excerpts. Ultimately, you should read meditations for the reason that people have read it for now thousands of years. There's an American philosopher, Bran Blanchard, who said that most people now don't care about the marches

and the counter marches of the various Roman commanders. He says, what the centuries cling to is this notebook of thoughts from a man whose life is so unfamiliar and unknown to us, but in the midnight dimness, he said, he wrote down not the events of the day or his plans for tomorrow, but something of more permanent interest like the ideals and

aspirations that he was trying to live by. And the first chunk of meditations illustrates that. We have Marx's realist writing who his influences were, what his debts and his lessons were. And across these 17 or so entries but roughly 2100 words, basically 10% of the book, he's acknowledging and codifying these lessons that he learned from the important people in his life. And here in the privacy of these pages, he's recognizing what he learns from his grandfather,

serenity and courtesy, that he learned manliness from his father, but without heirs and ostentation, that he learned piety and generosity from his mother, that he learned work ethic from his father, but without heirs and ostentation, that he learned piety and generosity from his mother, that he learned work ethic from his tutors. He's grateful for the gods surrounding him with good people in his life. Some critics have criticized meditations as being like repetitive. Well, it's repetitive because it's what Marcus Aurelius needed to repeat to himself. There's a bunch in here that he needed to hear and then there's a bunch not in

here that he didn't need to hear. It's bug is actually a feature. It is not performative in any way. And so here you have this man under this immense strain and pressure and temptation and he's writing these reminders about being humble and patient and empathetic and generous, despite all that he is dealing with. So is it a diary? Is it a commonplace? Is it a journal? It's kind of all of the above. What is very interesting is that Marcus isn't writing this

in his native tongue of Latin. He's writing it in Greek, the language of philosophy. So he's reading in Greek and writing in Greek. That's why we see references to Socrates and Heraclitus and Diogenes and then his favorite philosopher Epictetus. He's trying to work these things through. You are seeing Marcus Aurelius as a work in progress in the way that we are all works in progress. There's a French philosopher who writes a book about meditations called the Inner Citadel.

And he was saying that if you see meditations as a kind of spiritual exercise, even he uses this word spiritual combat, that's what meditations is. So it's just a unique look at a man in a unique set of circumstances trying to do something that we're all trying to do, which is become who we're capable of becoming to not be corroded or corrupted by what's happening around us

by being the best that we're capable of being. Marcus Rios is striving to do that just as I am striving to do that in my life and you're striving to do that in your life. You can see how personal meditations is from book one. We don't know how Marcus actually organized it, but the way it comes down to us is that book one is organized in the Gregory Hayes translation, which is my favorite. The first book, roughly 10% of the book

is known as the debts and lessons section. And it's Marcus Aurelius listing what he learned from his grandfather and his mother, his philosophy teacher, Rusticus, who introduces him to Epictetus, what he learns from Fronto, his rhetoric teacher, what he learns from his adopted father, Antoninus, what he learns from the gods.

So what you have Marx really spending the first chunk of meditations on is just reminding himself of the lessons he learned from the people he most admired. This sort of glimpse into the influences that shaped him is just partly what makes it such a unique and I think inspiring and important book. The reason you should read Meditations is that it is a gateway to stoic philosophy.

Now Marcus Aurelius doesn't explicitly identify as a stoic. Gregory Hayes, his best translator, would say that if you ask Marcus Aurelius, he probably would have identified as a philosopher, that meditations is a work of philosophy as opposed to simply a work of stoicism But it really is probably the best and the most accessible Introduction to stoic philosophy stoic philosophy being a philosophy that was already ancient by the time Marcus Aurelius came to it It's founded in the fourth century BC by Zeno in Greece. It makes its way to Rome. So it's already hundreds of years old by the time Marcus Aurelius is introduced to it. His favorite Stoic philosopher is Epictetus. He has given a

copy of Epictetus's discourses by his philosophy teacher Junius Rusticus. At his core, Meditations is revolving around this idea being philosophical and of being this person that philosophy wants us to be throughout meditations. What you'll find Marcus Rios emphasizing is the way that philosophy can guide and transform us. And I would say there's three rules of life that Marcus reiterates constantly throughout meditation. So first, he is emphasizing acting justly towards others, doing the right thing, whether you're loved for it, hated for it. He says, just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. He says, cold or warm, honored or despised, tired or well rested, just that you do the right thing. And then he talks

a lot about the idea of acceptance. He quotes Epictetus talking about the art of acquiescence, right at the core of stoicism is this idea, some things are up to us, some things are not up to us, we have to take power over the things that are up to us and accept the things that are not up to us. And so what Marcus is introducing you to and still struggling with himself, that's why he talks about it so much in meditations, is just what are the things that are not in our control? What other

people think of us? What other people do? External events, the moment in time we're born, right? He's just talking over and over again, hey, this isn't up to you. Don't worry about this. This is up to you. You got to focus on that. And lastly, Mark Cerrillo comes to the idea that obstacles are opportunities, that instead of being rattled by things, thrown off by them, discouraged by them, we have to seize it as an opportunity that there is good in this, that this is a challenge, that life is asking something from us. And then if we can respond with strength and perseverance and energy, that we can not only survive this, if we can respond with strength and perseverance and energy that we can not only survive this but we can make something of it. So these are kind of the the core ideas of meditations.

Mark Sturulius trying to help you live a life of strength and honor and patience. Again, he doesn't know you exist. He is trying to get those traits out of himself and in that journey we can learn from him. But Stoic philosophy is really built around these four virtues, courage, discipline, or temperance, justice, and wisdom. And what Marcus Rios is saying in meditations is that whoever you are, whatever you are doing, whether you are an emperor like he was or a slave like Epictetus was, this is your opportunity to practice virtue, to live a philosophical life. He actually says this in meditations

that no role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you're in right now. Again, he's talking to himself, so he means being emperor. But this is also true for a soccer mom, a steel worker, a senator, a soldier, owner of a bookstore, husband, father, son, helicopter pilot, whatever it is that you do, Stoicism is a philosophy that can help you. And whatever situation you're in, Stoicism is the philosophy to guide you. So I wrote a book many years ago called The Obstacle is the Way. The Obstacle is the Way, which I've tattooed on my arm here, is an idea that Mark Shibulis expresses in meditations, the idea that we don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens.

The idea that he is coming to over and over again in meditations, the idea that Stoicism is built around is that everything you experience in life is an opportunity to practice virtue. Someone is a dick to you, you just go bankrupt, you break your leg, you go to jail, you are plunged into fame and fortune, whatever situation you're in, Stoicism is a set of principles and ideas, and then also practices, that can help you not lose your mind inside of that.

That all these situations are an opportunity for courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. Look, Marcus has a hard life. He buries multiple children, he experiences a flood and famine and wars. And who is he turning to for help for guidance, counsel, he's turning to his teachers, his loved ones, his mentors, etc. Of course, also turning to philosophy. He writes in meditations that you have to see philosophy as this sort of ointment, this soothing treatment, this sort of pain reliever,

something designed to help us with the difficulties of life. And that's what Stoicism is as a practice. Again, Stoic philosophy was not this abstract, theoretical debate thing. It's not these big complicated words and ideas you can't pronounce. There's tools and strategies and ideas to help you with the difficulty of life.

And Seneca writing before Mark Sturlus would say, you know, what is philosophy offers? He says, philosophy offers counsel. And that's what Mark Sturlus is offering himself through philosophy in the pages of meditations. And that's what Stoicism offers. And that's why this is such a great accessible entry point in to this wonderful philosophy.

And that itself is a reason you should read meditations. It is part of a long tradition. When I read meditations for the first time in my college apartment, I did not know how many other people had sat at tables all over the world, all throughout history, and were themselves wowed and changed and opened up and strengthened by these very words. I didn't know that Theodore Roosevelt had taken it with him on his River of Doubt tour. I didn't know that Frederick the

Great rode into battle with it in his saddlebags. I didn't know that generations of people have been digesting and consuming and talking about and being transformed by these ideas in meditations that Marcus Aurelius himself having been introduced to Epictetus and Stoke philosophy through his teacher, Rusticus, who he thanks. He thanks him at the beginning of meditations in the Rusticus section. I'll find it here for you. He says that he learned from Rusticus to read attentively and not be satisfied with just getting the gist of things. And he says, and for introducing me to Epictetus's lectures and loaning me his own copy. So the person who turned me on to meditations was following in that same footsteps, recreating

that same process 1900 years later. And you're watching this video and maybe you pick up meditations and then you pass it to someone. That is what meditations has been for all these generations because it works because there's something in it so unique and unparalleled, so specific and yet so universal that makes it not just relatable, but actionable, and it makes it work. And look, the list of people who are huge fans

of meditations goes on and on. John Steinbach, John Stuart Mill, Beatrice Webb, General James Mattis took it with him on 40 years of deployments in the Marine Corps. Ariana Huffington has not just read meditations many, many times, but she keeps a laminated note card of a Marcus Aurelius quote in her purse at all times. A former Prime Minister of China

has reportedly read it a hundred times. There's current sitting senators who are fans of Meditations. Even J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, has acknowledged it and recommends the book. Ambrose Bierce, the great Civil War hero and contemporary of Mark Twain. And not only is he a big fan,

but his father was named Marcus Aurelius Bierce. Robert Louis Stevenson. So you have great authors, great thinkers, great political minds, East and West. And then, you know, you have an Olympic athletes and special forces operators to this day, all turning to meditation. There was even a segment back in 2016

that I saw on ESPN and it said, Marcus Aurelius helps Nick Saban prep for the Trojans. So people from all walks of life, big and small, powerful, powerless, have all turned to meditations over the years. Again, for a reason, because it works. I think you see why it's resonated with all these people when you read it. I mean, book five of meditations, which struck me as a college student has been striking

people for thousands of years. Marcus writes, at dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself I have to go to work as a human being. What do I have to complain of if I'm going to do the things I was born for, the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm? But it's nicer here, he writes. Is that what you were born to do to feel nice instead of doing things and experiencing them? Look, you have the most powerful man in the world talking about how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning. That maybe doesn't seem like philosophy at first glance, but then you go, yeah, why not just lay

around? Why not just idle your life away? And he tells you exactly why. In book two, he opens it with a similar morning meditation about all the frustrating and obnoxious people that you're gonna meet in the day. He says, when you wake in the morning, tell yourself the people I will deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly." Now is he trying to be depressing and cynical? No, he's trying to be aware, he's trying to be prepared. Right? One of the stoic ideas is that what is unexpected lands heaviest. But then he says the beautiful part. He says, but they can't hurt me. No one can

implicate me in ugliness. He says, I can't feel angry at my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes like two rows of teeth upper and lower to obstruct each other is unnatural to feel anger at someone to turn your back on him. These are obstructions. So again, it begins with the sort of laments and then it ends with this sort of hopeful mission of why we're here and what we're supposed to do. In book six, Marcus Aurelius talks about getting over jealousy and taming his temper. In book nine and throughout the book, he's dealing with mortality, right?

This is a man who buried multiple children who was sickly for most of his life, who lives through a plague. In book 11, he's working through the despair. Time and time again, he is saying saying like this is your most important job Don't forget your job is to be a good person. That is what you control. He's saying how can anything stop you? How can anything stop you from acting with courage and justice and discipline and wisdom it can't that's why? Meditations has resonated with so many people and and then the other reason it resonates is not just what it says but how it says it. This is a book that in a sense is written in the second person, although he feels that way

because he's writing to himself. Like when Marcus Aurelius is saying you, as in you have to assemble your life action by action or the things you think about determine the quality of your mind or your life, when he says choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed, yeah he means him Marcus Aurelius. But as we read it thousands of years later, you feels like me, it feels like you, it feels like all of us. The exercise in self-improvement that is meditations is so sincere and so earnest, almost painfully earnest at times, that it feels like he is speaking directly to us. And as a result, the social hierarchy falls away,

the generations, the centuries falls away, the wealth disparity falls away, the antiquity falls away, and it feels like you are talking to yourself, like you are talking to someone who cares about you and wants the best for you. As unrelatable as it might seem, it is in fact

exactly relatable because you know since the time of Zeno or as Mark says in meditation, since the time of Vespasian, people have always been doing the exact same things. He says people have been marrying and raising children and getting sick and dying and waging war and throwing parties and doing business and says they've been farming and flattering and bo children and getting sick and dying and waging war and throwing parties and doing business. And he says they've been farming and flattering and boasting and trusting and plotting and hoping people would die, complaining, falling in love, saving money,

trying to win high office or achieve power. He's saying like, people have always been doing the same things. So as a result, the same philosophical insights hold true. What Marcus Aurelius is going through dealing with the limitations of life is in a way the same thing that Epictetus, a slave is going through, even though their lives are so inconceivably different, they are fundamentally and biologically human beings in a screwed up world. And so that's why Meditations has landed.

That's why it resonates. And so we find inspiration there in Marcus talking about the importance of kindness instead of anger, about not dwelling on our misfortunes. I think readers from all cultures, all walks of life for all time, past and future, have and will be able to see Meditations as this kind of guide to the good life,

to inner calm, to inner calm, to inner peace, to inner self mastery. Meditations is basically Marcus Aurelius's personal guide to living a life of virtue, fighting to be the person philosophy tried to make him, seeing everything as an opportunity to practice these ideas of courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. What Marcus would call in meditations the touchstones of goodness. You might recognize these virtues as the cardinal virtues.

Cardinal comes from the Latin cardos, which means hinge. It's pivotal stuff, basically. That's what meditations is. It's a pivotal book about pivotal stuff, about living with virtue and erite or excellence. These are ideas. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, if you're an emperor or a servant, if you're physically strong or physically weak. Virtue is what you can draw on in any and every situation to do what is right, to do what needs to be done, to do what is excellent, what is beautiful.

The Stokes would say, Epictetus talked about how if you want to be beautiful, make beautiful choices. Meditations is really a book about Marcus Rios trying to get himself to make the beautiful choice in every situation, to do not what's easy, not what feels good, but what is right. And what Marcus tries to remind himself of is that these really are beautiful things.

He says, you know, look, if you will ever find anything in your life better than courage and discipline and justice and wisdom, he says, it must be an extraordinary thing indeed. And so if these are touchstones, if these are cardinal, if you've actually ever seen a compass, right? A compass has the cardinal points on it. These virtues are supposed to be lodestars, which is to guide you in what you're doing, right? To be courageous and brave, to have fortitude, to be willing to sacrifice, to be in command of yourself, to be composed,

to be moderate, to have balance, and then to act with fairness and service and fellowship and goodness and kindness and honesty, and then to love learning, to be always growing and changing, to have self-reflection and self-awareness and serenity and perspective. That's courage, discipline, justice, wisdom. Those are the ideas. That's what Marcus is trying to instruct us. That's what Marks-Ruiz is trying to remind himself of. And that's what Meditations ultimately instructs us in.

Are we always going to live up to these ideas? No. Did Marcus? Also, no. But he's aspiring. He's trying. And he's coming back to the pages of the journal, coming back to the ideas, to the quotes, to the inspiration and example of his mentors and teachers and role models, and trying to get back there, trying to work on it. And I think this idea of like, is there anything better than courage and discipline and justice

and wisdom is great. It holds up, right? We have discovered a lot of things since the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans. We have automobiles and computers. We have cell phones. We have cures for diseases that were a death sentence in Marcus Aurelius' time. But we really haven't found anything better than courage, self-discipline, justice, and wisdom. Marcus Aurelius does not have an easy life. Basically everything that can go wrong goes wrong for him. 20 years of peace and prosperity that exists before he becomes emperor just all

evaporates with the Antonine Plague, a historic flood, devastating wars, and then he has health problems, his marriage has problems, his children have problems. He's like a person, right? Just stuff is constantly going wrong. Difficulty, adversity, these are unavoidable facts, not just of his existence, but of existence for all time. And so what Meditations is, why it's such a beneficial book to read,

is you're watching Marcus really try to get through this. He's trying to turn down the voices in his head. He's trying to overcome doubt and fear, resentment, grievance, trying to tune out distraction, trying not to be overwhelmed by anxieties. We learn in meditations that Marcus is struggling valiantly to not identify with his thoughts, his doubts, his misperceptions. Like a great Buddhist, he's able to let the thought pass by and not grab onto it, not attached to it, to listen without

letting it define him. Throughout the book, we see Marcus Surreles going, Hey, no, no, anxiety is not out here being done to me. I am the source of the anxiety. I am the source of the anger. I am the source of the harm in my perceptions, in the story I'm telling myself. And that conversely, I get to decide how I grow from this, how I change from this, how I was improved by this. Marcus Aurelius is wrestling with adversity and winning. One ancient historian writing in Marcus Aurelius' time, he would say that Marcus doesn't meet with the good fortune that he deserves

and his whole reign is involved in a series of troubles. But he says, I admire him all the more for this very reason because amidst these extraordinary events, he says, Marcus survives and preserves the empire. The reason we read meditations is because the proof is in the pudding. Marcus Aurelius is great because of what he goes through and what helps him go through it. It's this. It's what prevents him from being corrupted. It's what keeps him decent. It's what keeps him going.

This is a man who attended way too many funerals, not just in life, but in his own family. And yet he gets out of bed every morning. He works hard. He tries not to become beaten down. He tries to remain hopeful, tries to remain kind and decent. This is a man in an incredibly unusual and disorienting position. People are cheering for him. People are jeering at him. People are hate him. People love him. He has power and wealth, yet he's constrained by these norms, by these philosophical ideas. And it is stoicism. It is the pages of meditations that guide him through, right, that he turns to, that helps him shoulder the load. And that's what meditations can do for us.

Meditation shows us that the path to peace is not in escaping, it's not by eliminating stress or difficulty, but it's about that inner journey. It's that battle. Mark says that you wanna be dug in like a wrestler, ready for sudden attacks. And so through his reading and studying,

Marcus gives us, I think, some real actionable lessons. You know, he says, don't let your imagination run wild. Don't extrapolate the worst case scenario. You know, he says, you don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have to upset you. He says, the best revenge is to not be like the person who did this to you. He says that your job is to do good for others. He says the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. He reminds himself that look life is short and

that it'll be over soon enough and that he doesn't have to worry about things going on forever. Just over and over again he's giving themselves these little insights. Any one of them would be a viral quote or you could potentially build a book around. And here they are page after page, Marcus Aurelius providing them for us. He talks about, if you want tranquility, you've got to do less. You've got to ask yourself what's essential and what isn't.

Give yourself the benefit, he says, of doing essential things better. He says, don't expect to live in Plato's Republic. You live in the real world. Do the best you can with what you've got. He talks about accepting success without arrogance and failure with indifference. He says, why is it that we, although we love ourselves, for some reason we love other people's opinions about ourselves more than our own. He says, how worthless is it to strive for posthumous fame? He says, you won't be able to enjoy when it comes.

He tries to break things down. He says to strip them of the legend that encrusts them, to see them for what they are, to see what really matters. And he talks over and over again about speaking the truth, doing the right thing, and that ultimately, we've got to live while we can because all we have for certain is this present moment. And most of all, he's saying that the situations we experience in life are opportunities.

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. Everything is an opportunity for us to practice virtue. He says, it's like throwing fuel on top of a fire. He says, you throw something on top of the fire, it transforms it into heat and light. That's what he's trying to cultivate. That's why people have always come to Marcus Aurelius.

And that's what Marcus Aurelius embodies as a spirit. When I first read this book, when I was 19 years old, and this book first came into my hands, I got a lot out of it. I sat down, I read it, I took notes. There are quotes I took from that first reading that I still think about on a day-to-day basis. But the real benefit that I've taken from meditations,

and the real reason you should read it, is that every time you pick it up, you get something new out of it. It's a book you should be reading, not a book you have read. There's a reason that Mattis took it with him on 40 years of deployments. There's a reason that Mattis took it with him on 40 years of deployments. There's a reason that one of the prime ministers of China

says he read it over a hundred times. There's a reason that Seneca talked about lingering on the works of the master thinkers. Every video I make, every article I've written, every daily stoic email that I've done about meditations has helped me see it from a slightly different angle. It wasn't until COVID that it fully hit me that Marcus Rios is writing during a plague is help me see it from a slightly different angle. It wasn't until COVID that it fully hit me that

Marcus Rios was writing during a plague and how what he saw people do and how it made them behave changed his perspective. And then I just missed that because that wasn't relevant to my life in 2006. It wasn't relevant to my life in 2016. So look, my copy you can see is it's worse for wear, but I have folded almost every page on bottom and every page on the top. I have flags, I have notes, I have multiple copies. These are just some of my copies that I've read over the years. I've gotten things from different translations.

I've gotten things from books about meditations. Again, it is a book you are reading. He is a person you are studying, not someone you have studied. Mark Shreves quotes the poet, philosopher Heraclitus quite a bit in Meditations. And Heraclitus famously said that we never step in the same river twice. The idea being that it's not the same river

and we're not the same person. And I think Meditations is a similar book. Although it more or less stays the same, you bring and see something different in each time you pick up Meditations. And also by looking at the different translations, you can be struck by different interpretations. What 18th century Americans were looking at it for

in their English translation versus 21st century Americans. What Marcus was writing in Greek 20 centuries ago sounds different to us than perhaps he meant it, but that's why it is a living work, even though it is, in another sense, stagnant. So you come to it over and over again, I want to leave you with the idea that you shouldn't just read meditations once, but you should be reading it all of your life, you should have it on your bedside table, you should travel with it, you

should flip through it at random, read a few passages here or there, you should come to it over and over and over again. And it will give to you over and over and over again, because you are changing, the world is changing what we understand about the world changes. And in that way, meditations is a book that keeps on giving but ultimately, it's a book you give yourself by deciding to pick it up by deciding to read it, whether it's the Gregory Hayes translation, or the annotated edition by Robin Waterfield that I love, or quite frankly, any translation, an audiobook, whatever, you have to bring this book into your life

and let it change your life. It will help make you the person philosophy tried to make you. It will help you become a little bit closer to being great like Marcus Aurelius, but also being great like you are capable of being. That's why I made this video and why I want you to read this book. Meditations has guided me through breakups, through dropping out of college, through natural disasters, through success, through disorienting, confusing times, through having children, through getting married, through writing my own books. Every time I go to meditations, every time I went to meditations,

there was something different there. As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. The wisdom pops out at you. That's why I just find it so fascinating looking at how I clearly read passages and parts of it didn't stand out to me, but like here I highlighted something,

but then later, many years later, I bracketed something else. I can see all the different pens, pencils, Sharpies, highlighters. I can see my own life evolving along with my reading of this book. And that's what meditations is. I've carried meditations to multiple countries in multiple decades of my life. And as a result, I am a better human being for as I as I think anyone who reads meditations becomes a better person.

When I wrote the Daily Stoic eight years ago, I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going. The book was 366 meditations, but I'd write one more every single day and I'd give it away for free as an email. I thought maybe a few people would sign up. Couldn't have even comprehended a future in which three quarters of a million people would get this email every single day

and would for almost a decade. If you wanna get the email, if you wanna be quarters of a million people would get this email every single day and would for almost a decade. If you want to get the email, if you want to be part of a community that is the largest group of stoics ever assembled in human history, I'd love for you to join us. You can sign up 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. It's not the dark you have to be afraid of.

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