The Daily Stoic - The Best Way To Arm Yourself | We Were Made For Each Other

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

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Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Markis, really a Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target,

the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion-forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. The best way to arm yourself. Perhaps you remember the final scene of the movie Gladiator. Maximus is wounded severely and he's fighting against Comitus, who he has just temporarily disarmed. Sword Comitus shouts to his Praetorian guard sword, but the soldiers refuse to help him.

Maximus bleeding badly drops his sword and begins to drift into unconsciousness. His family is waiting for him in the afterlife. He walks towards them, but with a final exercise of will he seizes command of himself. Commodus comes at him with a dagger. With his bare hands and faltering strength, Maximus fights Commodus to submission and then kills him, as comedists impotently struggles against the very weapon he tried to wield. Victorious, but dying, Maximus uses his last breath to order Rome to be restored to the vision of Marcus Aurelius. It's a fictional scene, of course, a goose bump inducing one, to be sure.

But also, in its own way, it's an illustration of one of the best passages and meditations. Be a boxer, not a fencer, Marcus really is right to himself. It's better to have your weapons be a natural part of you than to be something you have to pick up. Cominus is dependent on his sword. He's dependent on the power of his office. He's dependent on fear. He's at the mercy of his own bodyguards. But Maximus, Maximus is his own master. He moves under his own power. He is ruled by dignity by his own strength, by his own principles, by his own weapons.

He doesn't need anything or anyone, not to be great anyway. He doesn't need anything or anyone, not to be great anyway, even when he is bleeding out and under attack all he has to do as Marcus Aurelius writes, his clinch, his fist. Who are you? Comedis or Maximus? Self-reliant or an imposter? A tyrant or a gladiator? A boxer or a fencer? If you're being truly honest, what would your final exercise of will look like?

We were made for each other and I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoke 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by yours truly. My co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman. You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoke store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoke in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best cellos.

It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. You'll more quickly find an earthly thing kept from the earth and you will find a person cut off from other human beings.

Marcus Arelius' Meditations 9.9. Now naturally, Marcus Arelius and the rest of the Stokes were not familiar with Newtonian physics, but they knew that what went up must come down. And that's the analogy that Marcus is using here. Our mutual independence with our fellow human beings stronger than the law of gravity. Philosophy attracts introverts to be sure. And the study of human nature can make you aware of other people's faults and can breathe

contempt for others. So do struggle and difficulty. They isolate us from the world, but none of that changes that we are as Aristotle put it, social animals. We need each other. We must be there for each other. We must take care of each other and allow others to care for us and return to pretend otherwise of each other and allow others to care for us and return to pretend otherwise, is to violate our nature, to be more or less than what it means to be a human being. You know, one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelis, it's not obviously attached to today's entry, but he says, the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. And Marcus Aurelis talks about common good, this idea of our connectedness,

this idea of sympathy, like 80 or so times in meditations. I mean, just over and over again, he talks about it. And that's not because he's emperor, that's because it's what stoicism teaches that we're connected. We're part of this cosmic whole that we're here for each other. In fact, the whole cosmic whole that we're here for each other. In fact, the whole point of stoicism, one later stoic says is to take our immediate circle of control, ourselves, our family, etc. and expand it outwards, or rather pull people on the way distant edges of the circle of our concern down closer to the center, to connect with them, to care about them, to do things for them. That was not just our obligation,

that was the good life, according to Marcus Aurelius. I think that's what I've was both inspired with early on in the pandemic and then have had so much trouble dealing with. And I know it's not been perfectly stoked the way that I've dealt with it, but it's I'm a human being and it's hard. But when you see people acting so vehemently anti-social, when you see people deliberately tearing at the fabric of our connectedness in the middle of a public health crisis, right? Polarization is always a problem, right?

Dividing people against each other is always a problem. But when you do it and the direct result is that people needlessly die alone in hospital rooms because they were infected with a deadly virus. Because someone, someone convinced them that say vaccines didn't work or convinced them that masks didn't work or convinced them that masks didn't work or convinced them that This was nothing they should just go about their lives and you know that that Didn't matter and it's sadder still when those people realize That their decisions have affected other people

Maybe it's someone who caught a case of COVID and it didn't affect them, but then they're Their mother or their father or their grandmother their grandfather as as I happen to know It's happened to some extended to some friends and their extended family the guilt of realizing then when it's too late It's too hard to do it and it's possible to do anything about it that our actions have consequences and that That we did one of the most unforgivable things there is in this world, which is externalize consequences of our actions onto other people. We are meant for each other. We are part of a whole. The reason I decided to take COVID seriously

in my family is not because I'm particularly worried about my health or my young children's health or my wife's health. We're all healthy, I have very little in the way of pre-existing conditions. I've access to good medical care. I can afford to miss out on work or whatever or something where to happen. What I said to myself from the beginning because this is what still is some teaches that I didn't want to be part of the problem. I didn't want to make it worse for anyone else, right? I didn't want to be a conduit. I didn't want to be a vector to use the medical term for something that could inflict pain

or death on someone else to the best of my ability. And I've obviously not perfect at this in the rest of my life, nor have I been up until this point, but it was an eye-opening experience, right? We have to think about how our actions affect other people. We can't cut ourselves off from caring that other people I was laughing in a way, although also shaking my head, when Kyry Irving announced that he wasn't going to be vaccinated

because he was doing what was best for him. Now that's an ironic thing for a guy who plays a team sport for a living to say, right? The whole point is that we don't do what's best for ourselves. We try to do what's best for the team, for society, for the common good, as the Stoics talked about. That's today's message. Thank you for bearing with me.

Thank you, the vast majority of you who have internalized this message, have done the right thing, cared about other people. Be well and be safe out there. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoke.com slash email. So check it out at dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members,

you can listen to the Daily Stoke early ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for. FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes

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