The Daily Stoic - Where Are They Now? | Keep The Rhythm

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Marcus Aurelius loved history and he loved literature. He loved reading about the courts of past emperors. He loved the plays of the great Romans and their poems. He loved the lectures of Epictetus, which had been given to him by his teacher Rusticus.Sometimes, as he pored over these pages, a thought struck him. Where are they now?✉️  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 happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree'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. Where are they now? Marcus Aurelius loved history and he loved literature. He loved reading about the courts of past emperors. He loved the plays of great Romans in their poems.

He loved the lectures of Epictetus, which had been given to him by his teacher Rousticus. Sometimes as he poured over these pages, a thought struck him, where are they now? What happened to the advisors of Augustus, or the generals of Alexander or Alexander himself? The answer was as obvious as it was, inescapable, yet so easily ignored or denied by most of us in the course of our busy daily existence. The band Deathcap for Cutie has a new verse about this. They sing in every movie I watch from the fifties there's only one thought that swirls around my head now and that's that everyone there on the screen, yeah everyone there on the screen, well

they're all dead now, they're all dead now. They're all dead now." That's what Marcus tried to remember about the supposedly important or powerful people that he read about. They were all gone now, barely remembered. Their names were no longer familiar. Their statues were falling down. Their post-Jumus fame already expiring. Not that it did them any good.

And he knew, and this was the important part, that the same thing was going to happen to him. Everything is transitory. He wrote the knower and the known. What mattered then was the present moment and not much else. What mattered was being good because it was good, not because it would make him famous or wealthy or more powerful.

Memento Mori. We are all mortal. Life is transitory in brief. It cannot be taken for granted. It cannot be delayed or deferred because we long for immortality or legacy, which again, we cannot enjoy it. They are all dead now. And someday, perhaps very soon, you will be laid alongside them, and all your plans and pretensions with you. Live and act accordingly. Keep Theritham. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Steward Journal, 366 days of writing

and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them. You can check out the Daily Stoke Journal,

anywhere books are sold, you can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoke store, it's store.dailystoke.com. Marcus are really, it's must have known that as emperor, he was part of a grand and great history, as a philosopher, he knew that all people are part of the rhythm pulsing through both history

and their own lives. And he liked to remind himself not to lose that beat. Return to your philosophy who would tell himself when he drifted. Don't give in to distractions. In fact, he tried constantly to return to it. That kind of awareness, that pang, special attention, is something he learned reading from epictetus. I told the students that while none of us can be perfect, we can catch ourselves when we begin to slide, when we drift from where we should be. So can you feel that rhythm this week? Can you point to examples when you really feel locked into it? And we have

two quotes from Marcus and one from Epictetus, walked along gallery of the past of empires of kingdoms succeeding each other without number. You can also see the future. For surely it will be exactly the same, unable to deviate from the present rhythm. It's all one whether we've experienced 40 years or an Eon, what more is there to see? That's meditation 749. And then meditation 611, he says, when forced as it seems by circumstances into utter confusion, get a hold of yourself quickly. Don't be locked out of the rhythm any longer than necessary. You'll be able to keep the beat if you are constantly returning to it. And then Epic Titus is discourses 4-12, he says, When you let your attention slide for a bit,

Don't think you will get back a grip on it whenever you wish. Instead bear in mind that perhaps because of today's mistake, Everything that follows will be necessarily worse. Is it possible to be free of air? No, not by any means, but it is possible for a person to always be stretching to avoid air. And we must be content to at least escape a few mistakes by never letting our attention slide. There was something I was just thinking about as I

read this to you. Let me look it up. I was thinking about this and I remember I wrote an article, wrote a blog post, I'm looking at this, this is March 4th, 2012. So this is before, this is, this is, trust me, I'm lying, this mostly written, but it's not out. I've moved to New Orleans. I'm transitioning towards this sort of different life. And anyways, I wrote a blog post on my site called Return to Philosophy, and I'll read it to you. I have written this post before, but it remains a common theme. The busier we get, the more we work and learn and read, the further we drift.

We get in a rhythm. We're making money, being creative. We're stimulated and busy. It seems like everything is going well, but we drift further and further from philosophy. So we must catch ourselves and return to it, pick up meditation, Santa Cappu-Tarque, Hadoo, our notecards, of quotes and reminders, anything from that shelf of great books.

Stop and evaluate, read something that challenges that informs no matter how much learning or work or thinking we do, none of it matters unless it happens against the backdrop of exhortative analysis. The kind rooted in the deep study of the mind and emotion, and demands that we hold ourselves to certain standards. We must turn to the practical, to the spiritual exercises of great men and actively use them. It's the only way we'll get anything out of the rest of our efforts. It's simple. Stop learning or working for a second and refine. Put aside all the momentum and the moment, tap the brakes, return

to philosophy. And then I found the other post, which is, wow, dated December 22nd, 2009. So, I guess I'm 22. And I wrote, lately I have felt off. As I felt down, it occurred to me how long it had been since I sat down and read philosophy. I knew I should fix this, but I didn't. A new book would come and I'd immediately pick it up. I think I've spent so little time reading out via shame to sit down with something I've read before. But this was a sham. What I was doing was distracting myself. It's what Stephen Pressfield calls the resistance.

I made myself busy so that I would have no chance to feel better. And I knew that philosophy requires work and self-criticism and one inevitable conclusion that my problems were almost entirely my own fault. Their resolution requires an active process that only I can initiate. Philosophy is the tool with which to do so, as one would say, and I think this is Marcus Aurelius, I'm quoting, doctors carry their tools on their person, or more ideally a boxers tools are their person. We should seek to do the same. There is no excuse for being too busy or too distracted, nor is there any alternative.

So anyways, if you feel like you're slipping a little bit, know that I do that too, and I have now, for well over a decade and a half. And you just pick yourself back up. You go back to the rhythm as Marcus Relia says, you pick up your philosophy, you return to it, and you keep going. So I'll leave you there, and I hope you pick up the rhythm this week, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us,

and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. 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. Thanks for watching.