The Daily Stoic - No One Can Give You This | Check Your Privilege
Episode Date: July 28, 2025“Why do you wait?” Seneca asks us. “Wisdom comes haphazard to no man.”📚 The Four Stoic Virtues: Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, Courage, are timeless keys to living your best life. Th...e Daily Stoic is releasing a limited collector’s edition set of all four books signed and numbered, with a title page identifying these books as part of the only printing of this series. PLUS we're including one of the notecards Ryan used while writing the series. Pre-order the Limited Edition Stoic Virtues Series Today! | https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/stoic-virtues📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work📔 Pick up your own leather bound signed edition of The Daily Stoic! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎙️ 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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 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 DailyStstoic.com.
No one can give you this.
We ask where people got their degree.
We ask where someone went to school.
We hope someone will volunteer to mentor us.
This is wrong.
And education isn't something anyone can give you.
It's something you get for yourself.
It's something you take.
It's not somewhere you went to school for classes for a lesson,
but somewhere you are going.
It's not something you did.
It's something you are doing.
By his own telling, we're told that Seneca took
to his education with Gusto,
that he laid siege to the classroom
and was the first to arrive and the last to leave it.
Cato was famous for his philosophical dinners,
inviting the smartest and wisest minds of the ancient world
to discuss the timeless trials of everyday life. Scipio
Emilianus, the great scholar warrior of Rome, was ever engaged in the pursuit of arms or his studies,
an ancient historian tells us. He was either training his body by exposing it to dangers
or his mind by learning. And of course, there is a famous story about an elderly Marcus Aurelius spotted leaving
his palace in Rome. Where are you going, a friend asked. I'm off to see Sextus the philosopher,
he replied, to learn that which I do not yet know. It never stops. It is never handed to you. No,
you must get wisdom yourself. Indeed, you cannot find a Stoic who did not take their education into their own hands,
who did not give themselves a great education, even if they had access to fine teachers.
And you'll find that they all remained forever a student of life and literature.
Why do you wait?
Seneca asks us.
Wisdom comes haphazard to no man. The reality is there's no shortcut to wisdom, no app, no AI bot, no secret formula.
It can't be hacked.
It can't be downloaded.
It must be earned through the same hard work that people have been doing for thousands
of years, reading and thinking and living and reflecting.
And that's what the new book from me, the final in the four virtue series, I have it
right here.
I've been working on it now for six plus years.
I'm super proud of it. with the new book from me, the final in the four virtue series. I have it right here.
I've been working on it now for six plus years.
I'm super proud of it.
And it's now available for pre-order.
If you like Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny
or Right Thing Right Now, this is the fourth and final book.
We have not just signed and numbered first editions
of Wisdom Takes Work, but we also have a special limited edition run of all four books signed and numbered first editions of Wisdom Takes Work. But we also have a special limited edition run
of all four books, signed and numbered just 1500 of them.
I'm just finishing up the signing of those now.
We've got a bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses
for people who pre-order any of the books,
bonus chapters, signed pages from the manuscript.
We're gonna do a special Q and A.
Plus you can have dinner with me.
If you wanna learn about these,
grab your numbered signed first editions, just go to dailystewick.com slash wisdom. I'll link to it all in today's show
notes. Grab that four book series before it runs out. If you're gonna want to give some to some
friends, grab some more and get those manuscript pages. Bunch of awesome stuff. I hope to see you
at the Philosopher's Dinner that we're going to do. And I'm really excited for you to grab this
book when it comes out in October, but it supports authors in a big way if you pre-order them. So if you could do that,
I would really appreciate it. DailyStoic.com slash pre-order and grab wisdom takes work and
round out the four virtue series. Thanks everyone.
Check your privilege. This is the July 28th entry in the Daily Stoic, and today's quote comes to us from Moussonius
Rufus, the teacher of Epipetus.
"'Some people are sharp and others are dull.
Some are raised in a better environment, others in worse.
The latter having inferior habits and nurture
will require more by the way of proof and careful instruction
to master these teachings and to be formed by them
in the same way that bodies in a bad state
must be given a great deal of care
when perfect health is sought.
At the end of a frustrating exchange,
you might find yourself thinking,
oh, this person is such an idiot,
or asking why can't they just do things right?
But not everyone has had the advantages that you've had.
That's not to say that your life has been easy.
You've just had a headstart over some people.
And that's why it is our duty to understand
and be patient with others.
Philosophy is a spiritual formation, care of the soul.
Some need more care than others, just as some have a better metabolism or were born taller than others.
The more forgiving and tolerant you can be of others, the more you can be aware of your various
privileges and advantages, the more helpful and patient you will be." And again, I think it's
worth pointing out here that Epictetus was taught by Mussonius
Rufus.
So Mussonius Rufus is this teacher, he's known as the Roman Socrates, he's great and wise
and brilliant.
And he teaches the best and the brightest of Rome, most of which would be rich, powerful,
privileged people.
And it's somehow he makes room in his classroom for Epictetus.
And you think about where Epictetus came from.
He walks with a limp because of the years in slavery,
because of the torture he underwent.
You think about the deprivation, the struggle.
Mussonius Rufus finds not just a way to reach Epictetus,
but make him great.
He's patient with them.
He encourages them.
And this isn't the only evidence we have of Mussonius Rufus
sort of understanding his own privilege
and being generous and open-minded.
Mussonius Rufus also famously says
that women should be taught philosophy,
which was a remarkably progressive thing at that time.
So I know like when people hear check your privilege,
this was a less loaded term I used as the title
of this section when I wrote the book in 2015
and it came out in 2016.
I get people have an instinctive reaction
is that, oh, it's woke or whatever.
But the truth is we are all privileged
in some form or another.
And how do I know this?
Because you are listening to this on a podcast,
which means you have a smartphone.
Maybe you're driving in a car.
It means you're commuting to a job in a city
that has public transportation.
And there are literally billions of people
for whom that is not just not true,
but almost incomprehensibly luxurious and wonderful to them.
They could not even conceive of doing some of the things that
you take for granted. And then even in the context of like,
let's say you had a super hard life, and I tried to make that
caveat in the think, maybe you're tall, maybe you're beautiful, maybe your parents actually loved you as a child, right? Maybe you
haven't been horribly abused or maybe you were horribly abused, but not as horribly as other
people have. We all have privileges in our life. We all have advantages, right? We all have things
that give us a leg up in the world.
And that's not to say that the other things haven't happened.
It's one, to be grateful for those things
and to be patient with people that don't have those things.
And to try to sprinkle the advantages we have,
to share it, to spread the wealth, to lift others up,
and to be patient and forgiving and understanding with the people who have not been it, to spread the wealth, to lift others up and to be patient
and forgiving and understanding with the people
who have not been blessed the way that we have.
To be like Musonius Rufus,
to be able to say,
Musonius Rufus was powerful and important
and had access to the best and the brightest.
And his greatest legacy was this former slave that he helped.
And through helping that former slave,
he helped not just that person, not just improve their life,
but had an immediate impact then through Marcus Aurelius
and through you and I today.
We would not be listening to this were it not
for the generosity and patience and understanding
of Mussoni's roof is too epitetus.
And I think that's a wonderful thing to emulate
and to pay forward.
And I think that's a wonderful and this isn't to sell anything.
I just wanted to say thank you.
["The Last Supper"]