The Daily Stoic - You Can’t Join Them
Episode Date: February 25, 2026People are the way they are. They will always be this way. We don’t control that. 👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unloc...k ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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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.
You can't join them.
It's a dark world filled sadly with dark people, people who lie, people who cheat, people who steal,
people who do all the things that Marks Relius opens that passage in meditations with.
The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest,
jealous and surly, he says, and he was right, as we all know. But it's important to understand
that Marks Reelis didn't use this as an excuse, and more importantly, he didn't join them.
As he says just a few lines later, no one can implicate me in ugliness. Elsewhere in meditations,
Marks Rueless talks about not becoming like our enemies, and it's the same idea. People are
the way they are. They will always be this way. We don't control them. We don't control them.
We do control who we are.
We control whether we let them drag us down.
We control whether we become like them.
It's ugly out there, but we don't have to be ugly.
We can be beautiful.
We can be kind.
We can be honest.
We can be decent.
We can be good.
We have to be.