The Daily Stoic - This Is a Bad Way To Drive (and Live) | A Garden Is Not For Show

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

With the proliferation of dashcams and the spread of social media, we see these clips everywhere. It’s basically its own genre of video at this point. A driver is frustrated with someone going too slow in front of them, so they honk. Then they swerve, step on the gas to pass them–often waving a middle finger or honking a horn or shouting out a rolled down window as they do so–only to almost immediately get pulled over. Or violently crash. A vivid, painful demonstration of poetic justice a few miles down the road.It would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.---And in today's excerpt from the Daily Stoic, Ryan discusses why it's better to devote your time and energy to actually doing things instead of letting everybody else know that you are doing them.✉️ 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.

Bosh Legacy returns, now streaming. Matt has been taken. Oh God. His daughter is in the hands of a madman. What are the police have been looking for me? But nothing can stop a father. We want to find her just as much as you do. I doubt that very much.

From doing what the law can't. And we have to do this the very way. You have to. I don't. Bosh Legacy watched the new season now streaming exclusively on FreeVee. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Suryte. And we are the hosts of a Red Handed, a weekly True Crime podcast.

Every week on Red Handed, we get stuck into the most talked about cases. But we also dig into those you might not have heard of, like the Nephiles Royal Massacre and the Nithory Child Sacrifices. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Find, download, and binge-read-handed wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcasts.

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, I 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. This is a bad way to drive and live. With the proliferation of dash cams and the spread of social media, we see these clips

everywhere. It's basically its own genre of video at this point. A driver is frustrated with someone going too slow in front of him so they honk. Then they swerve and step on the gas to pass them off and waving a middle finger or honking a horn or honking a horn or shouting out a rolled down window as they do. So almost immediately get pulled over or immediately crash. And the bewildered filmer passes the wreckage

just a few miles down the road. It would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous, but it is at least a good reminder. First, the life on the road is dangerous. Any one of us could die in an accident at any moment. In fact, nearly 43,000 people died on U.S. roadways in each of the last two years alone. Our modern cars, our modern culture built around highways, is filled with risks. Yet we simply choose not to think about it.

It's also a good reminder that impulsive emotional decisions are the cause of so much trouble. Yes, slow drivers are annoying. Yes, in many cases, they're breaking the law themselves, and they are preventing us from getting where we're trying to go. Yet trying to get around them, trying to vent our feelings at them, it's not worth it. Driving is dangerous enough the stokes would tell us if they had lived to see cars, don't add trouble on top of it. Don't blind yourself to distract yourself. None of us have the cognitive resources to spare. Seneca's wonderful essay on anger is a must read for anyone traveling on the roads these

days. He reminds us what an ugly emotion anger is and how silly it is to be screaming at people you will never meet again. Especially since they probably didn't inconvenience you on purpose anyway. And certainly, none of it is worth dying over. A garden is not for show. This is today's entry September 15th in the Daily Stoic. And the quote today is from Epic Titus' Discourses 48.

He says, first practice not letting people know who you are. Keep your philosophy to yourself for a bit. In just the manner that fruit is produced, the seed buried for a season hidden, growing gradually so that it may come for full maturity. But if the grain sprouts before the stock is fully developed, it will never ripen. That's the kind of plant you are displaying fruit too soon, and the winter will kill you. You know, after you listen to this podcast for a while or follow us on Instagram, it might be tempting to say,

oh, this is great, I get it, I'm a stoic, I've always been that way. But it's not that easy, just because you agree with the philosophy doesn't mean the roots have fully taken hold. Fooling around with books so you can sound smarter, having intimidating libraries like tending a garden to impress your neighbors, growing one to feed someone, that's a pure and profitable use of your time. The seeds of stoicism are long underground. Do the work required to nurture and tend to them so that they and you are prepared and sturdy for the hard winters of life.

The idea is not that we get credit for working on a book, that we get credit for doing this or that. It's that we are actually doing it, right? The doing is important. And I deeply believe this, that talking and doing fight for the same resources. And you have to cultivate a willingness to be misunderstood, to be not fully appreciated, to just be like, I'm working on my stuff, man, I'm developing. I don't need your approval.

I don't need your recognition. I talk about this actually, in the ego as the enemy, there was a great Twitter account, or Tumblr account, I forget exactly, a couple years ago called, I'm working on my novel, and it's just people telling other people how they're working on their thing. Are they? Are they really?

No, by definition, they are not. They wouldn't have posted this, right? So part of this idea is cultivating, you know, epic tea, Epic Tidus also says, you know, if you want to improve, you can tend to be misunderstood and unappreciated. You can tend to be foolish. Say, I don't know about that. You know, he means to not talk about being a stoic,

not to identify with being a stoic, but to quietly work on being one, to quietly get to work on that project, to put in the hours, to put your butt where it should be, do the work, leave the recognition, the understanding, the appreciation to someone or something else. That's not why you're doing it. That's not what's motivating you. That's not what is important.

So I'm going to leave you here today, let you get after it, get to work, turn this off, go after it, make some progress. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a renewable natural gas bus replacing conventional fleets. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. Enbridge, life takes energy.