The Daily Stoic - You Get To Choose This (So Don’t) | We Reap What We Sow

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 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, visitdailystoic.com. Things will go wrong, fortune will turn on you. You will make mistakes, plans will be disrupted, dreams will be dashed. This is life. We don't control so much. What happens? When I interviewed happiness expert Dr. Lori Santos for the Daily Stoac podcast, her class at Yale is one of the most popular in the school's history, she told us that in addition to wearing a memento Mori ring every day, I wear one too. You've probably seen it if you've ever seen videos of me or I'm doing talks. She also has this bracelet. that reminds her of the Buddhist story of the second arrow.

Starting point is 00:01:33 What is the second arrow? The first arrow is all the stuff we've talked about. Someone says something rude to you. A car breaks down. A business fails. A deal falls through. A job opportunity slips away. What follows is the second arrow.

Starting point is 00:01:51 When we ruminate on our suffering, when we blame ourselves, when we tell ourselves we'll never recover, when we choose to feel singled out. In meditations, Mark Sorosso talked about how the harm doesn't come so much from the event, but from feeling harmed by it. That is the second arrow. We choose to say we've been insulted. We choose to think I'll never recover.

Starting point is 00:02:13 We choose resentment. We choose self-doubt afterwards. We choose to despair or give up on humanity. And it is here, not in the event itself, that the real harm is done, not just in our perceptions, but in how it changes us and our behavior. going forward. The first arrow is coming. Let's avoid shooting ourselves. The second one.

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Starting point is 00:05:16 Crimes often return to their teachers. This is from Seneca's play Theestes, which is a dark, disturbing play. to put it mildly, but a fascinating read. It's ironic that Seneca would have one of his characters utter this line, because as we know, for many years, Seneca served as a tutor and mentor to the Emperor Nero. And while there is a lot of evidence that Seneca was in fact a positive moral influence on this deranged young man, even at the time some of Seneca's contemporaries found it strange that a philosopher would serve as the right-hand man to such an evil person. They called him the tyrant teacher. And just as Shakespeare taught in Macbeth, bloody instructions which being taught return to plague the inventor. Seneca's collaboration with Nero ultimately ends with the student murdering the teacher. And it's something to think about when you consider whom you work with and whom to do business with in life. If you show a client how to do something unethical or illegal, might they return the favor to an unsuspecting you later? If you provide a bad example to your employees, to your associates, to your children, might be able to you?

Starting point is 00:06:25 they betray you or hurt you down the road? What goes around, comes around, is the saying, or karma, the notion we have imported from the East teaches us a similar idea. Seneca paid the price for his instructions to Nero, and as has been true throughout the ages, his hypocrisy, avoidable or not, was costly, and so too will yours be. There's a great tweet that came out March 12th, 2019 that I think of often. It says, me sewing. Ha, ha, fuck, yes. And it says, me reaping.

Starting point is 00:06:59 Well, this fucking sucks. What the fuck? And then there is, of course, the other famous tweet that says, well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions. As the expression now goes, right, fuck around and find out, that's what happened to Seneca, right? Seneca rolled the dice. thought he could feed the monster, thought he could constrain Nero.

Starting point is 00:07:27 He was exactly like a lot of the figures that I talked about in my podcast episode with Tim Miller, the right-wing political operative, who saw so many people convince themselves, he said these sort of minor savior complexes, that they were very important. They were important enough that could constrain Trump or get something out of them that It would be good for them in the short term. It always comes back to bite us, right? The consequences of our actions come back to us. Crimes return to their teachers. You reap what you sow. And this was the biggest mistake of Seneca's life. It's a mistake I've made in my life. I thought it was different. I thought I could make it work. I thought I was making a bargain that would work out. And it didn't. It never does. We learn from the Stoics not to. just what they tell us, what they teach us, what they write about. But the mistakes that they made in their life, right? Marcus Aurelius, his example, shows us hopefully something about being a better parent. Seneca teaches us, you know, who to work for, who not to work for, how to detangle ourselves

Starting point is 00:08:39 from clearly toxic, unchangeable situations. Seneca never unfortunately speaks about this explicitly or explicitly enough. He just sort of hints at it at his plays. But we can learn plenty from this example, and it's why I put it in the Daily Stoic, and it's just a reminder. Crimes return to their teachers. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic 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 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.

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The Daily Stoic - You Get To Choose This (So Don’t) | We Reap What We Sow

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