The Daily Stoic - You Can Never Do This Twice | The Freedom Of Contempt

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

The first time was revelatory. The first time you watched Mad Men. Or The Godfather. Or cracked open Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Or heard Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ or listened to Fantine sing, I Dreamed a Dream from Les Mis. Or stood in front of a Caravaggio painting.It hit you with all the power that new and brilliant art has. It shook you. It opened up something in you. It taught you something. But in some way, the power of these moments is actually overrated or at least overstated. It’s powerful because it’s new and immediate. But what’s actually more transformative is what happens when you return to those works of art, lingering as Seneca said, on the words of the master thinkers.---And in today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt reading, Ryan discusses how the practice of treating the luxurious things that we yearn for with contempt through thoughtful and intentional language serves to remind us of what really matters in life.📙 The Daily Dad: 366 Lessons on Parenting, Love and Raising Great Kids is available for preorder right 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, including the a special leather edition of The Daily Stoic.📱 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. You can never do this twice. The first time was revelatory. The first time you watched madmen or the godfather or cracked open markets to really his meditations or heard Tom Petty's free falling or listen to fantane saying, I dreamed a dream from Les Mises or stood in front of a Carvaceo painting.

It hit you with all the power that new and brilliant art has. It shook you. It opened up something in you. It taught you something. But in some way the power of these moments is actually overrated or at least overstated. It's powerful because it's new and immediate or new to you. But what's actually more transformative is what happens when you return to those works of art, lingering, as Seneca said, on the words of the master thinkers. The Stelox were fond of Heraclitus' idea that we can never step in the same river twice, because the river is in a constant state of movement and change. But with art or literature or music or film, it's a little different.

The work is the same. It's you who is different. This notion of rewatching is a misnomer because you're re-introspecting Cristele Antonio Russell recently said in the New York Times article about the burst of popularity of certain TV shows many years after they came out. The generation who watched HBO's girls in their 20s, for example, is now in their 30s, and they have a very different understanding of themselves, as well as that time in their lives.

We can never watch the same show twice. We can never listen to the same song twice. We can never get the same piece of advice twice, because our experiences, our tastes, our understanding of the world has changed. But those second and third and fourth encounters, those re-interspectings are actually where the real insights and breakthroughs can come from. That's when we really get it. That's when we might really come to get ourselves in the process.

For instance, some of you might be on year four or five of the daily still egg, or in some cases, I guess six or seven, I'm on read what? 150 of meditations, I don't even know, but every time I pick it up, I get something else out of it. And that's also the idea behind the new book, The Daily Dad, 366 lessons on parenting and love and raising great kids, which is meant to be read in a loop each day, bringing new insights from the same pages each year. You can grab it to pre-order. It's out beginning of May.

You can get signed first editions for me, which I'm really excited about. They just arrived. And you can grab that at dailydadbook.com. The daily stoic, if you have put a number of readings on it, you want one that will hold up better over time. There's a special leather edition, which you can grab at store.dailystoic.com. I'll link to that in today's show notes also.

Anyways, grab the daily dad, keep reading and rereading and lingering on the master thinkers. It works if you work it. It's funny. I talked 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. And 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 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 or text daily stoke to 500-500. That's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500. that's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500. The freedom of contempt. The language we use to describe things imputes value to those things. We often embellish our language with superlatives to help make our choices of what to buy, where eat or drink seem much better than they really are. As Emperor Marcus Aurelius could have the finest fileriny and wine at his table at any meal,

but he preferred to remind himself that this was only grape juice. As Emperor, he was the only Roman allowed to wear a purple cloak, but he took pains to point out that this cloak was like any other, just died with shellfish blood, so as to produce a purple hue. This week, try to practice cutting your own luxuries and the things you yearn for down to size with a little contempt, describe them with the bluntest language you can and see how much their power over you diminishes.

Just as when meat or other foods are set before us, we think this is a dead fish, or a dead bird, or a pig. Also, this fine wine is only the juice of a bunch of grapes. This purple edge robe is just sheep's wool dyed in a bit of blood from a shellfish, or of sex that is only the rubbing of private parts together followed by a spasmic discharge. In the same way our impressions grab actual events and permeate them. So we see things as they really are. Marcus Aurelis' meditation 613. Keep a list before your mind of all those who burned with anger and resentment about something or even the most renowned for success, misforgin evil deeds, or any special distinction, then ask yourself, how did it work out? Smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth trying to be

legend. That's Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 1227. You know what wine and liquor tastes like, it makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand bottles pass through your bladder, you are nothing more than a filter. This is from the Daily Stoke Journal that the week's entry is titled, The Freedom of Contempt. I don't know, this is long with one of my favorite exercises in all of Stoicism. It's just brilliant, it's cynical, it's funny, it's really practical too. You know, Mark has really didn't have to live in a time of Madison Avenue advertising. He didn't live in a time of social media influencers.

He didn't live in a time of propaganda and misinformation. There wasn't spinning and selling the way that there is now. And yet, even then, he had to practice, just seeing through all the bullshit, seeing through to what things actually were, stripping them as he says of the legend that encrust them. So when Epictetus talks about putting things to the test, this is what Marcus is doing. He says, I'm not going to get distracted by my urges, by my immediate positive reaction to this, to the way my mouth is watering when I see X or the

way that my eyes get big when I see Y. So, I'm going to really break down what I see here. I'm going to describe it in the most unflinching, unvarnished, least sympathetic language possible. And I'm going to see when I what that reflection back to me does, how it changes my opinion of it. Right? Sometimes, you know, there's that expression about seeing how the sausage gets made. When to me does, how it changes my opinion of it, right? Sometimes, you know, there's that expression about seeing how the sausage gets made. When you go and see the sausage gets made,

or you see, you know, the underneath things, they lose their power over you. And that's what this stoic practice is really about. And it's so important. It's not that you don't want, you'll never enjoy this or that ever again. It's just you want to enjoy it with the deceit turned down a little bit, the legend, a little more thread there.

This is an active practice we have to go through. As you walk out in a parking lot and you see a Lexus remind yourself, this is just a Toyota with fancy or branding, right? When you see a $300 pair of Nike's, remind yourself of the sweatshop that this was likely made in. When you hear someone talking about how they are a billionaire, remind yourself just how dumb a lot of billionaires

have turned out to be, right? When you're intimidated by someone's fancy degree, again, remind yourself who else is graduated from that institution. Think of the corruption, think of the evil ideas that have come out of that institution over the years. Again, this isn't a dismisser to mean the things entirely. It's just to counteract that impulse of jealousy, of envy, of lust, of fear. You know, there's that expression about if you see a beautiful woman, there's that expression about if you see a beautiful woman that somewhere or someone is sick of that person's shit. And that's true for everything, every person, and it'll take it down a peg and then help you see it tad more rationally. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke 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. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wondery's new podcast, Dis and Tell,

where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans,

a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app.