The Daily Stoic - This Is What They’re Going To Say | The Freedom of Contempt

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Ryan talks about the power of Memento Mori, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal.🗓 Get your Memento Mori Life Calendar at https://dailystoic.com/mmcalendarSign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoke, intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing.

So let's get into it. This is what they're going to say. Do you ever think about what people are going to say after you die? Maybe think about this a lot. Maybe that's why you work so hard, why you chase success, because you want a legacy. Well, the truth is, no matter what you accomplish or who you are, the conversation is most they're going to go like this. Did you hear that so and so died? No.

And then they'll say, how? And then they'll tell them. And that will be it, because that's how it goes. Always has. Always will. In Meditations, Marcus really mentions all the doctors who furrowed their brows over patient's deathbeds, eventually dying themselves. He mentions the worthlessness of posthumous fame.

He mentions how Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and were both buried, and how that was the end of that. Could Marcus have known that his ashes would be stolen and lost when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in the years after his death? No. Your whole life, your whole struggle, the most painful thing you and your family will experience will ultimately be reduced down to a trivial exchange between acquaintances. If you happen to go out in some unusual way, freak accident, sitting on the toilet,

whatever, they may even laugh. What can you do about that? Nothing. The point of this is to remind you of a critical stoke virtue, humility, you are not immortal, you are not special, you will not be around to relish your legacy, you will not be able to hang onto your grudges or your possessions. So just let go. Be present. Be good because good is a good way to be and be prepared for what happens to all of us, the best and the worst of us. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. Hey y'all, I'm Kiki Palmer, I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo, just

the name of you. Now I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiba Bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bag love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast.

I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know. So I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night.

But I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcast. Hey, prime members, you can listen early and app free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. The language we use to describe things imputes value to those things. We often embellish our language with superlatives to help make our choices of what to buy, where, eat, or drink seem much better than they really are.

As Emperor Marcus Aurelius could have the finest filerny and wine at his table at any meal, but he preferred to remind himself that this was only grape juice. As Emperor, he was the only Roman allowed to wear a purple cloak, but he took pains to point out that this cloak was like any other, just died with shellfish blood, so as to produce a purple hue. This week, try to practice cutting your own luxuries and the things you yearn for down to size with a little contempt. Describe them with the bluntest language you can and see how much their power over you

diminishes. Just as when meat or other foods are set before us we think this is a dead fish or a dead bird or a pig. Also this fine wine is only the juice of a bunch of grapes. This purple edge robe is just sheep's wool dyed in a bit of blood from a shellfish, or of sex that is only the rubbing of private parts together followed by a spasmic discharge. In the same way our impressions grab actual events and permeate them, so we see things as they really are. Marcus Aurelis' meditation 613.

Keep a list before your mind of all those who burn with anger and resentment about something, or even the most renowned for success, misforged in evil deeds or any special distinction, then ask yourself, how did it work out smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth trying to be legend? That's Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 1227. You know what wine and liquor taste like, it makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand bottles pass through your bladder, you are nothing more than a filter. This is from the Daily Stoke Journal, the week's entry is titled,

The Freedom of Contempt. I don't know, this is long with one of my favorite exercises in all of Stoicism. It's just brilliant, it's cynical, it's funny, it's really practical, too. You know, Mark was really, he didn't have to live in a time of Madison Avenue advertising. He didn't live in a time of social media influencers. He didn't live in a time of propaganda and misinformation. There wasn't spinning and selling the way that there is now.

And yet, even then, he had to practice, you know, just seeing through all the bullshit, seeing through to what things actually were, stripping them as he says, of the legend that encrusted them. So when Epic Titus talks about putting things to the test, this is what Marcus is doing. He says, I'm not going to get distracted by my urges, by my immediate positive reaction to this, to the way my mouth, is watering when I see X or the way that my eyes get big when I see Y. So, I'm going to really break down what I see here. I'm going to describe it in the most unflinching, unvarnished, least sympathetic language possible. And I'm going to see what that reflection back to me does, how it changes my opinion of it.

Sometimes, there's that expression about seeing how the sausage gets made. When you go and see the sausage gets made, or you see, underneath things, they lose their power over you. And that's what this stoic practice is really about. And it's so important. It's not that you'll never enjoy this or that ever again. It's just you want to enjoy it with the deceit turned down a little bit, the legend, the

little, little more thread there. And this is an active practice we have to go through. So as you walk out in a parking lot and you, you know, you see a Lexus remind yourself, this is just a Toyota with fancy or branding, right? When you see a $300 pair of Nike's, remind yourself of the sweatshop that this was likely made in. When you hear someone talking about

how they are a billionaire, remind yourself just how dumb a lot of billionaires have turned out to be, right? When you're intimidated by someone's fancy degree, again, remind yourself who else is graduated from that institution? Think of the corruption, think of the evil ideas that have come out of that institution over the years. Again, this isn't a dismisser to mean the things entirely. It's just to counteract that impulse of jealousy, of envy, of lust, of

fear. You know, there's that expression about it, if you see a beautiful woman that somewhere someone is sick of that person's shit. And that's true for everything, every person, and it'll take it down a peg and then help you see it a tad more rationally. It's not that life is short, as Seneca says, it's that we waste a lot of it. The practice of momentum worry, the meditation on death, is one of the most powerful and eye-opening things

that there is. We built this momentum worry calendar for D Stoke to illustrate that exact idea. Your life in the best case scenario is 4,000 weeks. Are you gonna let those weeks slip by or are you going to seize them? The act of unrolling this calendar, putting it on your wall and every single week that bubble is filled in, that black mark is marking it off forever. Have something to show not just for your years but for every single dot that you filled in that you

really lived that week. You made something of it. You can check it out at dailystoke.com slash mm calendar. Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoke early and 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. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt

Brownleur, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking, oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to,

I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.