The Daily Stoic - What Did You Think You Would See?
Episode Date: February 5, 2025The reason it makes you upset is because you expect it to be otherwise. Because you let it surprise you. Because you take it personally.🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: ht...tps://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.
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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 DailyStoic.com.
What did you think you would see?
Annoying people, toxic politics, litter, traffic, construction noise, spam calls, long lines,
noisy or nosy neighbors, phone calls that should have been emails and meetings that
should have been phone calls.
The things we encounter in the course of a day.
Everyone that Marcus Aurelius calls out in the opening sentences of meditations, the meddling, the ungrateful, the arrogant, the dishonest, the jealous, the surly, it's all there, it's always been there.
The question is, why does it surprise you? Cato's problem, Cicero once remarked, was that he sometimes thought he was living in Plato's Republic. In fact, he was living in the dregs of Romulus. You are living in the 21st century. It is
wonderful and advanced. It is also decrepit and dysfunctional. It is plagued
by the same problem society has always been plagued with, that humanity never
has and never will shake. The reason it makes you upset is that you expect it to
be otherwise, because you let it surprise you,
because you take it personally,
because you allow yourself, as Marcus writes,
to be implicated in the ugliness.
Don't let nastiness make you nasty, as we've been saying.
Don't be surprised.
Don't be dragged down.
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