The Daily Stoic - What Do You Pledge Your Sacred Honor To? | The View From Above

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

As the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew that this wasn’t some painless petition. This wasn’t some minor political stand. No, they knew, as they wrote, they were mutually pledging their “life, fortune, and sacred honor.” It was a cause they were willing to give everything for—even die for.This idea of sacred honor, of full commitment, is worth considering today on Memorial Day, as we honor and think about all the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.---And in today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt reading, Ryan reflects on the value of stepping back and seeing the bigger picture.💵 Visit dailystoic.com/wealth to sign up for The Wealthy Stoic wealth management course today.✉️ 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.

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 stoic intention for the week,

something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you're happy to be doing. So let's get into it. As the founders signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew that this wasn't some painless petition. This wasn't some minor political stand. Note they knew as they wrote that they were mutually pledging their life fortune and sacred honor.

It was a cause they were willing to give everything for, even die for. This idea of sacred honor, a full commitment, is worth considering today here on Memorial Day, as we honor and think about those men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Because here in the modern world, it's never been easier to jump on a

bandwagon with a hashtag or post a picture. It's never been easier to spout off on this argument or that one. It's also never been more common to declare oneself a victim of cancel culture or of persecution when one undergoes even the slightest consequences for their actions. People stormed the United States capital because they were angry about losing a free and fair election. And even so, they tried to invoke the mantle of the founders, not only were they wrong and evil, but then they whined like babies when they were maced by officers who really were pledging their lives to defend democracy. The Stookes knew about pledging one's life, liberty and sacred honor.

Thrasia and Helvides, as I tell in lives of the Stokes, they gave everything in their defiance of Nero. Cato committed everything to preserve the Roman Republic. Rutilius Rufus lost his job, his home, his standing in Rome, rather than participate in corruption. They didn't take these stands lightly, nor did they attach themselves frivolously to whatever the mob was angry about at the moment. The question for you today and always is, what do you pledge your sacred honor to?

What are you fighting for? Are you aware of the costs? Are you fully committed? This is not something to be done lightly. Honor matters. You should listen to our interview with Tamler Summers, but it also matters what you make a matter of honor. Fight on, fight hard, fight for the right things. Happy Memorial Day everyone. Be good, be well, be safe. It's funny, I talk to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it. I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading.

They're reading more than ever. And I go, let me guess, you listen audio books, don't you? And it's true. And almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible. And that's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from best sellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs. And of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part.

Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app. You'll always find the best of what you love or something new to discover. And as an audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, exciting new voices in audio. You can check out stillness is the key, the daily dad. I just recorded so that's up on Audible now. Coming up on the 10 year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books, so all those are available.

And new members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke. A text daily stoke to 500-500. That's audible.com slash daily stoke. A text daily stoke to 500 500. The view from above. This week's entry from the daily stoke journal 366 days of writing and reflections on the art of living.

It's our companion to the daily stoke. You know, it is a journal, but there's a lot of writing in it. I mean, there's a weekly meditation, there's a conclusion in intro. It's like 20,000 words. I do kind of think about it as a book I wrote. And each week we read here, the week's entry, uh, so you can listen to it. And hopefully it can influence your journaling in whatever form you decide to write down and think about your thoughts as epictetus.

As every day and night keeps thoughts like these in hand, write them, read them aloud and talk to yourself and others about them. So today's entry is about taking the view from above. The way to escape petty concerns and the worries of daily existence requires taking some time and getting what the Stokes like to call the view from above. This was something Marcus Aurelius reminded himself to do regularly. He had learned from Heraclitus that everything in the world was constantly changing, and that remembering this can eliminate so many stresses and concerns. So this week,

don't just look at what you're dealing with in your life up close, try to see it from far away too. Try to describe what another larger perspective would look like of your problems of your worries and of your obsessions. And Marcus really quotes here from Plato, he says, how beautifully Plato put it, whenever you want to talk about people, it's best to take a bird's eye view and see everything all at once, of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings, and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms, or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites. This is from Meditations 748. Watch the stars in their courses and imagine yourself running

alongside them. Marcus also says in Meditations, think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life. And then we have Heraclitus. He says, the cosmic order, the same for everyone, wasn't made by any God or human, but always wasn't always will be an eternal fire kindled in measures and extinguished in measures. Look, it's easy when you're thinking about

something, when you're dealing with something, when you're way deep in something, for it to feel like the most important thing in the world, for it to feel unprecedented, for it to feel overwhelmingly big. But when you zoom out, when you're in an airplane and you look down and you see these enormous fields or these whole cities, or you even see the town, sometimes when I'm flying in Austin, I can see the road I drive to get to my house and I can see my tiny little house, you know, it just shrinks everything down into its proper proportion, which is to say, it makes it really, really small. Because we are really, really small.

We are ants. You know, you look at ants on an ant mound, fighting over little seeds and tiny things, and it's easy to think, oh, these silly little creatures, but that's us. We are them. We are tiny. And by taking this view from above,

thinking of it with this perspective is really, really important. And it cuts you down to size. It's crazy to think, if you haven't seen the blue marble photo, it's actually, this is the icon on the back of our sympathy and medallion, it's crazy to think no human was able to see earth

from a distance until the 1970s, right? The highest perspective we could get from it was from a mountain, you know, like 10 or 15,000 feet or whatever. It wasn't until relatively recently, like when your parents were kids, if you're my age, that we were even able to truly see our own planet

from a distance, but Edgar Mitchell talks about this feat, one of the astronauts, he talks about this feeling you get in space when you see the Earth from a distance. And he talks about how immediately clarifying it is, how immediately you feel a deep connection, a profound connection to your fellow humans, how all your petty silly concerns go away, and all you want to do is help to be of service, to be good, to focus on what matters. And this is what Marcus is trying to do 2,000 years ago when it was a dream that human beings would ever enter space.

He's even then imagining himself along the stars. He's trying to wash away the dust of earthly life. He's trying to get perspective. Well, look, you have the benefit of doing that. You can get in an airplane. You can look at the satellite view on Google Maps. You can recall your memory of the heights that you've been to, looking down from the Empire state building or that tower in Dubai, if you've ever been there,

you have the ability to take Plato's view literally and figuratively in a way that the Stokes would have never imagined. And yet here we are tweeting about nonsense, fighting over nonsense, acting like those silly ants that we think were so much better than. Take Plato's view, get some perspective today. Also look at history, just think about Marcus Reales and what people were concerned about now

in 2000 years distant, the perspective that it gives us and what people will be thinking about in this very, of this very moment, 2000 years from now. This is so humbling and so important. You've gotta do it, check it out. Take Plato's view and hopefully you'll be calmer and wiser when I talk to you next week. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic 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.

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 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 and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air, from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings.

But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondery comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Download the Amazon Music app today.