The Daily Stoic - Who Was The Tough One? | Role Models

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Shopping local might seem like a tough cookie, but truthfully finding Ontario Made products is a piece of cake. That's why supportontariomade.ca exists. With over 17,000 products listed, everything from cars to cosmetics, it's never been easier to shop local and support Ontario manufacturers of all sizes. When you choose Ontario Made, you're supporting your neighbors, strengthening our economy,

and celebrating the incredible products Ontario sells with pride. Discover what's made right here. Visit supportontariomade.ca. 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 DailyStstoic.com. Who was the tough one? Just think about how tough he had to be to get through all of that. The flood, the famine, the plague, the coup attempt, the wars, his failing health, burying not one, but nine children. Just think of what it must have been like for Marcus Aurelius, how he could have kept going,

how he could have gotten out of bed in the morning. It's almost unimaginable, as we said recently, but you know what else we're not imagining? How it must have been for his wife Faustina. She bore those children. Her husband was gone for years at a time. She had to nurse him through his chronic health crises. She had to worry what would become of herself and her family when his failing health led

to that coup. She had to do this as people spread baseless rumors about her infidelity and loyalty. Seneca was forced to commit suicide by Nero. But what terror awaited Paulina, his wife, spared as she was by Nero's order, her life in Nero's hands on a daily basis? We talk about Rutilius and Musonius accepting their exile with a shrug. There is no mention of what became of their wives. Did they have to go too? Were they left behind? We don't talk about the slights and the condescension that they would have had to

put up with as the weaker sex. We don't talk about them having to find creative outlets for their mind and interests in a society where so much was closed off to them. We don't talk about accepting the powerlessness and injustice in reality of this life, although Epictetus could have certainly related. We don't talk about the fear of being raped or impregnated, which at best meant incredible pain and very realistically meant death. So it's worth asking who was actually more heroic? Who was actually the tough one in these relationships? Who was the true stoic? And actually we have a really good video. We just did this deep dive into some of the most bad-ass

and impressive stoic women in history. As you can imagine, some people got a little upset about that, but I think it's one of the best videos we did. If you don't subscribe to the Daily Stoic YouTube channel, you should. We also post a lot of the podcast episodes there, which you're welcome to watch also. Role Models Role Models. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoke Journal, 366 Days of Writing and

Reflection on the Art of Living by me, Ryan Holiday, anywhere books are sold, including The Painted Porch, my bookstore, at thepaintedporch.com. Adoption was a widespread practice in Roman society, especially the senatorial class and as a provision for imperial succession. Marcus Aurelius was himself the adopted son of the emperor Antoninus Pius, who himself was adopted by the emperor Hadrian so that Marcus could one day succeed them both to the purple.

While Seneca was never adopted, his brother Novartis was, becoming Gaius, who in the New Testament refuses to press charges against St. Paul. But Seneca liked to look at the phenomenon of adoption the other way around, saying that we can always choose whose children we want to be. For him, Cato, the towering resolute stoic who railed against Julius Caesar in defense of the Republic, was always standing by in his mind. The first book of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, in fact, is a catalog of all the people that

Marcus had learned from, and the lessons he had taken from their lives. So this week, take a minute to think of the models that you can follow, wise and admirable people that you can measure yourself against. "'We like to say that we don't get to choose our parents, Seneca said, that they were given to us by chance. Yet truly we can choose whose children we'd like to be, that's in on the brevity of life. But then in moral letter, Seneca said, we can remove most sins if we have a witness standing by

as we are about to go wrong. The soul should have someone it can respect, by whose example it can make its inner sanctum more invaluable. Happy is the person who can improve others not only when present, but even when in their thoughts. I think for me, this idea of choosing whose children you want to be is great, right? Whether you had amazing parents or the world's worst parents, you can also choose to be the

children of the greats of history. We did a Daily Dad email where Bruce Springsteen is talking about being an ancestor or a ghost. You know, who are the ghosts that haunt you and who are the ancestors that inspire you? And how can you choose to follow in the right footsteps? For me, Robert Greene is kind of an adopted father. He's about my father's age,

but he's who I wanna be as a person in many ways, professionally, he's deeply inspiring to me. The way even that he has spent so much time and energy and patience shaping me into the writer that I became, that in and of itself has been inspiring and is an example I try to follow in. So like, I've never met Marcus Aurelius, I'm not related to Seneca, I have no lineage that puts me back into ancient Rome with Epictetus, but we can still be the descendants of these

people. We can still be their children. James Baldwin was famously talking to his nephew and he said, you come from steady peasant stock, people who built the railroads, people who escaped via the Underground Railroad, people who responded to the blows of fate and life with dignity and poise and creativity and perseverance. Now, is this literally true? Does he know for a fact about the railroads or the Underground Railroads? No. but we choose what tradition we hail from. We choose whose child we wanna be by the example that we follow,

by the heroes we give ourselves in our mind. And that's what today's entry is about. And I hope you take a minute to think about whose footsteps you're following in and what example you are setting so that perhaps someday someone else might choose to be adopted by you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor.

Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on wondery.com slash survey. The Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lake presents tons of money at hilarious British forests that will have you rolling in the aisles. A young man fakes his own death and impersonate his cousin to collect a huge inheritance. What could possibly go wrong?

Don't miss this side-splitting comedy. Tons of money at the Shaw. For tickets, go to shawfest.com.