The Daily Stoic - It’s Always Been Like This (But Worse)
Episode Date: August 13, 2025The point is: It’s always been rough. The point is: It always will be rough. 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store....dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ 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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Searching for a romantic summer getaway.
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It's always been like this, but worse.
It's so easy to idealize.
the past, as if people haven't always been deranged, as if things haven't always been falling
apart, as if fate hasn't always been indifferent to everyone and everything. Socrates lived
through a 27-year-long war, a great power conflict between Athens and Sparta, and then in a
country ruled by what was known as the 30 tyrants. Zeno lived in a world torn apart by the wars
of Alexander the great successors and his own personal shipwreck. Kato saw the report
public fall. Seneca lived through Nero and watched Rome literally burn. So unstable were things that
shortly after his death, people enjoyed the spectacle of the year of the four emperors.
Epictetus spent three decades in slavery. Marcus Aurelius, as we've detailed, saw floods and famines
and wars. Indeed, this whole period is known as the beginning of the decline and fall. One could
go on and on. The point is, it has always been rough. The point is, it will
always be rough. The Stoics were tough. They had to be to get through what they lived through,
and you will need to be tough if you're going to make it through what the present and the future
holds. None of us control where we were born, only how we live. None of us control what our
leaders do, not really anyway, only how we live, how we act, how we lead in our own lives. We don't
control what happens. We control how we respond to what happens. We don't control the awfulness
of our times, only whether we will rise above them, only whether we will do good for and
inside them.