The Daily Stoic - It’s Cheap To Be Dead | Wherever You Go, There Your Choice Is

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

When you consider the insane amounts of money that some people feel the need to accumulate, when you see their estates, when you see them pinch every penny, what they’ll do for a dollar, when you reckon with the costs—to family and friends—it took to earn all this, you might assume they get to take it all with them when they die.Of course, we don’t. The Roman poet Juvenal joked that while Alexander was living, the whole world could not contain him, but in death, a coffin was sufficient. The humbling wisdom of this joke is one we ought to remember too, as we save ‘for retirement,’ as we ‘invest for the future,’ as we ‘build our legacy.’-In today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt, Ryan examines the power of choice through the Epictetus quote: "A podium and prison is each a place, one high and the other low. But in each place your freedom of choice is to be maintained if you so wish."✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double-duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, it will give you a quick meditation from the Stokes with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works. It's cheap to be dead.

When you consider the insane amounts of money that some people feel the need to accumulate, when you see their estates, when you see them pinch every penny, what they'll do for a dollar, when you reckon with the cost of family and friends it took to earn all this, you might assume that they get to take it all with them when they die. Of course, we don't. The Roman poet Juvenile joke that while Alexandra was living, the whole world could not contain him. But in death, a coffin was sufficient. The humbling wisdom of this joke is one that we ought to remember too, as we save for retirement, as we invest for

the future, as we build our legacy. It's very cheap to be dead. You won't need any of this when you're gone. You won't be able to appreciate your posthumous fame as Mark's Rearliest pointed out. Just as you won't be able to reap the appreciation of your investments, your legacy, your intellectual property rights, your real property, all of it will become utterly irrelevant to you one day very soon. All of it will become completely worthless, not objectively, but subjectively. Can you let that sink in? Can you make better, more temperate moderate decisions today? And light it that.

I remember very specifically, I rented an Airbnb in Santa Barbara. I was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I just sold my first book and I'd been working on it and I just needed a break and I needed to get away and I needed to have some quiet time to write. And that was one of the first Airbnb's I ever started with. And then when the book came out and did well, I bought my first house. I would rent that house out during South by Southwest and F1 and other events in Austin. Maybe you've been in a similar place. You stayed in an Airbnb and you thought to yourself, this actually seems pretty doable.

Maybe my place could be an Airbnb. You could rent a spare bedroom, you could rent your whole place when you're away. Maybe you're planning a ski get away this winter or you're planning on going somewhere warmer while you're away, you could Airbnb your home and make some extra money towards the trip. Whether you use the extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca-host. Wherever you go, there your choices. This is the January 19th entry in the Daily Stoic.

In our quote today is also from Epic Titus, discourses 2.6. He says, a podium and a prison is each a place, one high and the other low, but in each place you're free to have choices to be maintained if you so wish. The Stoics all held vastly different stations in life. Some were rich and some were born at the bottom of Rome's hierarchy. Others had it easy and others had it unimaginably hard. This is true for us as well. We all come to philosophy from different backgrounds, and even within our own lives, we experience

bouts of good fortune and bad fortune. But in all circumstances, adversity or advantage, what we really have just one thing we need to do. Focus on what is in our control as opposed to what is not. Right now, we might be laid low with struggles, whereas just a few years ago, we might have lived high on the hog, and in just a few days we might be doing so well that our success is actually a burden. One thing will stay constant, our freedom of choice, both in the big picture and the

small. Ultimately this is clarity. Whoever we are, wherever we are, what matters is our choices. What are they? How will we evaluate them? How will we make the most of them? Those are the questions that life asks us regardless of our station. How will you answer? This is actually one of the quotes that Stockdale sort of leans on in his seven years in the

Hanway Hilton, right? The Nepodium and the Prison is each a place, right? He'd experience both. He's a high-ranking military officer. He'd gone to great colleges. He lived a great life in America. And then all of a sudden, he's parachuting into a camp where he is viciously tortured and deprived day after day after day. And in some sense, many, many, many, many of his choices were taken from him, right? Do I go for a walk today or not? Do I eat this or that? Do I do this or that? So much of his life becomes circumscribed there in this tiny cell and this solitary confinement. And yet, he retains always the choices of what kind of person he is going to try to be in

those circumstances. Is he going to do his job? Is he going to stick with the philosophy that he believes in? You know, is he going to give up or not? He still has a lot of choices inside this world where so much choice has been stripped away. And that's really what the Stoics are saying. You become extremely wealthy,

extremely powerful. You have more choices, but you also have the same choices, right? Everything is taken from you and you're literally a pit in the ground, you're in a prison cell, all that power and wealth and all this stuff has been taken away. And yet most of the same choices remain, right? The dichotomy of control is still more or less the same. And so, you know, stoicism is then, even at its core, right? Epicetus and Marcus are realists. Those two men occupy those two spheres,

not theoretically, but in practice, actuality. Marcus really is all powerful. Epicetus is powerless, podium, prison. You know, they both try to focus on what's in their control. They both try to be a good person. They both try to make beautiful choices within the world that they are in. They both try to let reason rule those choices, let ethics, let virtually those choices. And that's the lesson for us today.

That's the idea that wherever we go, our choice follows us. We still have choices, right? We always have choices. That is many of the choices as we are legally entitled to that we deserve. It's fair, that's right, etc. That we want whatever. We still have choices inside every single situation right on down. How we feel about it, how we respond to it. That's what you should think about today and I wish you all the best. 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. Hey Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music,

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