The Daily Stoic - You Can Get Rid of It | The Present Is All We Possess

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. It's a timeless problem, rich or poor, old or young, married or single, successful or struggling, modern or ancient. What people do is we accumulate stuff. We accumulate, accumulate, accumulate until our homes, our cars, our minds, and our schedules are cluttered. In meditations, Mark's realist jokes about people whose abundance leaves their owner with no place to shit. And that's just the physical stuff. People also accumulate

problems and grudges and anxieties and opinions, piles and piles and piles of them. Our mental load grows and grows and builds slowly until we feel overwhelmed, stuck, and weighed down. And there is only one way out, ruthlessly decluttering. We have to eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. We have to get rid of stuff, get rid of our baggage, let go of beliefs, let go of worries, let go of people. We have to stop buying and stop saying yes. We must free ourselves from the weight of excess. Shed what's unnecessary and clear away what is holding us down. If you're selling online or of a storefront full-time or a side hustle, you know it's a challenge. People got to find you.

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up your privacy, visit duck.a.ai slash stoic today. That's duck.a.ai slash stoic, a private way to chat with AI from duck, duck. Go, where AI is always optional and private. Present is all we possess. And today's quote is Marcus Aurelius Meditations 214, so pretty early in Meditations, but it's one of the great quotes from the book. He says, were you to live 3,000 years or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living, and no one ever lives a life other than the one they are losing. The longest and the shortest then amount to the same.

for the present moment lasts the same for all, and as all anyone possesses, no one can lose either the past or the future, for how can someone be deprived of what's not theirs? Today notice how often you look for more, that is wanting the past to be more than what it was different, better, still here, etc., or wanting the future to unfold exactly as you expect, with hardly a thought as to how that might affect other people. When you do this, you're neglecting the present moment. Talk about ungrateful. There's a saying attributed to Bill Keen, the cartoonist, worth remembering.

Yesterday is the past, tomorrow's the future. But today is a gift. That's why it's called the present. This present is in our possession, but it has an expiration date, a quickly approaching one. if you enjoy all of it, it will be enough. It can last a whole lifetime. I had two thoughts.

I mean, obviously I wrote The Daily Stoic, but I was thinking sometimes when I read them out loud to you guys, I go, oh, I like that, maybe I'd tweet this, here's what I would add. I just had this experience going back through the obstacles away, and there's just little things that I've picked up since then that I would add. And when I hear, I go, oh, maybe I'd add this or that. I'd put it down on the note cards.

There's two little things. Actually, three. I'll give you two. The first two come from poems by William Blake. He says, He who binds himself to a joy, does the winged life destroy. He who kisses the joy as it flies,

lives in eternity's sunrise. And then the other one is from a longer poem, Augreys of Innocence, one of my favorites. But he says, To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, an eternity in an hour. It's this idea that, you know, the present is all that there is, but the present is so, so much.

And then my favorite, I've talked about my love of the singer Bonnie Vair, I'm pulling this up, so I don't mess it up because his lyrics are famously sort of in it. But one of my favorite Bonnie Vair songs is Blood Bank. Actually, we played it as my wedding. I think either when I walked down and then I waited for my wife, hey, I think that's when we played. I may even play in the whole intro, I forget, but I remember it's one of the songs we picked. But he says, Then the snow started falling. We were stuck out in your car. You were rubbing both my hands, chewing on a candy bar. You said, ain't this just like the present to be showing up like this? as a moon wane to Crescent, we started to kiss.

Anyways, I'm getting a little outside of stillisism here, I guess, getting pretty poetic. But what I like about both of those is they're just sort of showing the infinite, the mystery, the wonderfulness of present, right? We skip over it because we want what's next. We're worried about what's next and we don't want what's next. Or we're dwelling on the past, ruminating on the past, regretting the past.

And what we're ignoring is the beauty and the wonderfulness and the mystery and the absurdity and the joy and the fun and the ordinariness of the moment that we're in right now. And when we slow down, when we embrace it, when we show up for it, when we're in it, we get that. I have a big chapter on being present. And stillness is the key. I talk about Marina Abramovich and her

presentation the artist is present where she just sat there and just was there not doing anything not working on her phone not she was just there for hours and hours and hours and people came and sat in front of her and it was overwhelming and emotional and transcendent it was the kind of things that Blake was talking about and Bonne Verre was talking about it just just was wonderful and that's what the present is, even when the world is falling apart, even when what we know is coming up next is not great. Think about what the year could hold for us, the direction things are going, but as I play with my kids, or I brush their hair, or I was just in the swimming pool and I was looking up at the stars, you go, man, this is wonderful. I'm just going to be here in this,

at this moment, soak it in. That's what, sounds like, Seneca talks about, you know, let me give you this other quote. I know I'm just quoting a bunch today, but it's one of my favorite quotes from Seneca. He says, snatch the pleasures your children bring, let your children in turn find delight in you, and drain joy to the dregs without delay. No promise has been given you for this night. He says, no, even that's too long. No promise has been given even for this hour. But this minute, the present you're in, however, whatever time span you're going to define the present, that has been given to you. You're in it right now. So actually be in it. Be in all of it.

Be all the way in it. That's today's somewhat rambling message. And I'll leave you there. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoog podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years. 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.