The Daily Stoic - Mark Your Exit With Grace

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Daily Stoeck Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us dailystoweth.com. Mark your exit with grace. Today marks the anniversary of the death of one of humanity's greatest specimens. On March 17th, the year 180 AD, and what is now modern day Vienna, Emperor Marcus Aurelius breathed his last breath and died. We don't know exactly what his last words are. Cassius' dio claims that Marcus spoke his last sentence to his guard,

Starting point is 00:00:54 saying to him, go to the rising sun for I am setting. Given the incredible legacy of the man, these words ring somewhat inefficiently. Instead, we should remember Marcus' last writing as his last words, because this simple paragraph, which concludes his famous meditations, reads, as if the man wrote it as he faced the very real and immediate end of his existence and therefore stands as inspiration and solace to all of us living today.

Starting point is 00:01:23 You lived as a citizen in a great city. He wrote five years or a hundred. What's the difference? The laws make no distinction. And to be sent away from it not by a tyrant or a dishonest judge, but by nature, who first invited you in, why is this so terrible? Like the imprasario ringing down the curtain on an actor. But I've only gotten through three acts. Yes, he writes, this will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation and now direct your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine. So make your exit with grace, the same grace shown to you. That's actually Gregory Hase's masterful translation, which I love more than any of the others. It's actually the one in the leather edition that I'm

Starting point is 00:02:12 holding in my hands right now, which we published here at Daily Stoic. And on Marcus Aurelius' anniversary of his death, not a bad day, that reminds you to pick that up. If you haven't read it already, you can check it out at dailystoic.com slash leather or at store.dailystoic.com. I'll link to it in today's show notes. It's just a beautiful book. A miracle that it survives to us and my honor to bring to you in this premium high-end edition, which now also sits on my bedstand and I was just flipping through last night myself. Enjoy.

Starting point is 00:03:03 you

The Daily Stoic - Mark Your Exit With Grace

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