The Daily Stoic

The old joke--which dates back to the 1870s--is that if you’re not a liberal when you’re young you have no heart, but if you’re still a liberal when you’re older, you have no brain. Now we can put any partisan beliefs aside and see how this is at least partly true. When you’re young, it’s easy to believe in the inherent goodness of the world because you haven’t actually experienced any of it yet. You are naive. It’s easy to think that everything should be very simple and always fair in that phase of your life. But as you get older, you realize that the world is more complicated, and in fact that there is often a lot of wisdom and necessity in the mas morium--the way of your elders. A settling into a kind of conservatism as you age and experience life is reasonable and probably smart. However, it’s should be obvious that remark is also totally and completely wrong. Yes, it’s easy to believe in ideals when you are young, and yes it’s harder to maintain that idealism when you are older, but that is sort of the p

In 1940, while he was struggling as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Walker Percy wrote to his uncle and adopted father, William Alexander Percy, to give him the bad news about his grades. William Alexander, who introduced his young ward to the writings of Marcus Aurelius and had himself gone to Harvard, did not care for one second about the grades. As he wrote back to Walker, “My whole theory about life is that glory and accomplishment are of far less importance than the creation of character and the individual good life.” How lucky we might have been to get such a lesson from our own parents at that impressionable age! To hear, emphatically, that marks on a report card are not a reflection of who we are and that their recognition is such a hollow thing. Because it’s clear that most of us internalized the exact opposite: We think that fame and fortune are the marks of a good person. We connect them, like cause and effect. If/then statements in the logic of human existence.

There is an element of this philosophy that is a lot of work. You do all this reading. You do your morning and evening journaling. Maybe you attend meetup groups or even have pursued an advanced degree. Maybe you’ve joined Daily Stoic Life and participate in our discussions, or you discourse about Stoicism online wherever you can. As rewarding as this might be, it’s also true that it comes at considerable commitment and expense. Why should one do this? There’s an exchange in Chicago, the new book by David Mamet (himself a fan of Stoicism), that captures the reasons well. The characters, having found themselves on the wrong side of a mob war, are arming themselves and discussing where to hide a pistol for protection. Then one reminds the other that “the one phrase you never want to use” when trouble arises, is “Wait here ‘till I fetch it.” Marcus Aurelius would say something similar--that philosophy was designed to make us a boxer and not a swordsman. Because a boxer is built with his weapon in hand(s) whereas

One of the most stunning things about Anne Frank’s diary is how indefatigably happy it is. One might expect that her journal, which she kept from 1942 to 1944, as her family hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic, would be sullen and scared. Here she was, trapped at 13 years old with her parents, sister, another family and a stange older man. She was mature enough to know that any time soldiers could burst in and send them all to the camps. Yet somehow, page after page, is filled with profound meditations on meaning, friendship, happiness and life. Apparently, this was how she was in the attic on a regular basis as well. One recorded exchange has her chatting with Peter, the 16-year-old Jewish boy also trapped in the attic. Anne explains how she’d like to be a help to him in this difficult time. Peter: “But you’re always a help to me!” Anne: “How?” Peter: “By being cheerful.” Anne would write in a different entry this heartbreakingly inspiring encapsulation of her philosophy: “Beauty remains, even in misfor

“It’s unfortunate that this happened,” Marcus says in one of his imaginary dialogs. Then he corrects himself: “No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it--not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it.” This is the conversation we need to have when “bad” things happen. That car accident. That bad turn of the market. That messy breakup. Sure, we’d have rather none of it happened. But in a way, isn’t it better that it happened to us--someone as strong and well-trained as us--rather than to someone more vulnerable? Better another straw on your back than a back-breaking one for someone else. If you can start to think this way, you’ll realize just how lucky you are, even in the middle of so-called “misfortune.” Not everyone has what you have. Not everyone has the ability to rebuild like you do. Not everyone has the perspective to see the bigger picture. Not everyone has the philosophica

The line from George Bernard Shaw was that “all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” He isn’t wrong. The reasonable man bends himself to the world, because he insists to himself that the world is this way for a reason. The unreasonable man does not accept that and tries--sometimes with futility, sometimes with success--to bend the world to his will. So where does that leave the Stoics, given their repeated teachings on living according to nature and their emphasis on submitting to reason? Surprisingly, still in the camp of the unreasonable man. The man who declines to adapt himself to the world. Look at Cato and Marcus Aurelius, two men who lived amidst the decline and decay of Rome, two men who were rich and powerful and could have easily done the things most rich and powerful men did. But they never did. Instead they held themselves to incredibly high standards of behavior and personal morality. As a result, they stood as beacons of inspiration to millions of people around the world, in their lives an

One of the most misleading things about our world today is the increased sense of comfort we feel. Yes, on average planes crash less. Yes, diseases have been cured. Yes, infant mortality rates have made progress. Yes, crime is down. But the slow and steady increase in life expectancy obscures some very critical realities. First off, the fact that the average man in the United States now lives to be 76 and the average woman lives to be 81 does nothing about the fact that the clock of nuclear annihilation currently sits at two minutes to midnight. Second, averages do nothing for the individual. You can still get hit by a bus crossing the street. You can still fall off a ladder. You can still be the non-smoker who gets lung cancer. The odds might not make that likely, just as they don’t make winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning likely, but again, these things happen all the time. The purpose of pointing this out is not to scare you or contribute to your anxiety. It’s simply a reminder that there is

Humble people worry less than the arrogant. Why is that? Because they aren’t so conceited as to think they have any idea (or control over) what may or may not happen. The poet Rilke put it well: “Life is not even close to being as logically consistent as our worries; it has many more unexpected ideas and many more facts than we do.” Worry is pointless not only because it rarely makes things better, but also because you’re rarely ever worried about the right thing! Seneca’s line was that “nothing happens to the wise man contrary to his expectation.” By that the arrogant person might take it to mean that the wise man is so smart that they are aware of all the possibilities. The humble soul knows that is probably not what Seneca meant. They know it’s more plausible that the wise are aware of Murphy’s Law and the absurd randomness of the universe. That is, within the range of expectations of the wise man is the idea that just about anything can happen. Remember that today when you get anxious. The thing you’re ho

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was given a little piece of advice on her wedding day by her mother in law: "In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf." Ginsburg would say she applied it to her job too: "I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court. When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade." The Stoics were all about this. There is a story of Cato, who was struck by someone in an argument in the Roman baths. The man was forced to apologize when it was explained to him what an important person he had just punched. Cato’s response? “I don’t remember being hit.” He was practicing not just deafness, but forgetfulness—even as his face was probably still stinging from the blow. That’s the point though: You can go around in this life looking out for every insult and snide comment. You can hang onto every time you’ve been wronged and investigate every case of possible bad faith. Or you c

Remember that Stoicism isn’t about judging other people. It’s not a moral philosophy you’re supposed to project and enforce onto the world. No, it’s a personal philosophy that’s designed to direct your behavior. This is what Marcus Aurelius meant when he said: “Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.” Be open to the idea that people are going to be fools or jerks or unreliable or anything else. Let them be. That’s their business. That’s not inside your control. But you have to be disciplined with yourself, and your reactions. If someone acts ridiculous, let them. If you’re acting ridiculous, catch the problem, stop it and work on preventing it from happening in the future. What you do is in your control. That is your business. Be strict about it. Leave other people to themselves. You have enough to worry about. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today you might find yourself dealing with something tough. Stuck in a new situation. Hit with a situation that’s been developing for some time, but only now is bringing you pain. In tight situations like these, you need energy, creativity and above all faith in yourself. Defeatism won’t get you anywhere (except defeat). Focusing your entire effort on the little bit of room, the tiny scrap of an opportunity, is your best shot. As Seneca put it, “Apply yourself to thinking through difficulties—hard times can be softened, tight squeezes widened, and heavy loads made lighter for those who can apply the right pressure.” That’s not to say everything can magically be fixed. Seneca didn’t say that. He said hard times can be softened. A little room can be made. Blows can be blunted. But not if you give up. Not if you quit. Not if you tell yourself it’s somebody else’s fault and that it’s terribly unfair. You always have a move to make. There’s always something you can do. Even if that move is just making your peace.

There is a harshness and a hardness to the Stoics. But there is also a softness and a grace, the velvet glove over the iron first. Think of Marcus talking about how we must come to our “journey’s end with a good grace, just as an olive falls when it is fully ripe, praising the earth that bore it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.” First, it’s just beautiful language (and all the more impressive if you consider it was just a thought he jotted down to himself). Yet it is also an important example of that other side of Stoicism. The one that expresses gratitude and thanks and awe about the universe. As you toughen yourself up in this life—reading these emails, practicing these exercises—make sure you don’t lose touch with that. Make sure that you practice gratitude for what has made you in this life and the things you experience while you’re here. Make sure you practice that good grace. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-s

There’s no way around the fact that the Stoics talked about suicide. A lot. To the Stoics, suicide was famously the “open door”—the option available to anyone, at any moment. Cato, one of the most vaunted and towering Stoics, went through that door, gruesomely and bravely. So too, did Seneca. But it is worth pointing out, in a summer that saw the world lose two truly great musicians to suicide, and in a world that loses over 2,000 people to suicide every day (on average, a U.S veteran commits suicide nearly every hour), that the Stoics knew that life was hard and they knew what depression was like. It’s very unlikely that they would have ever encouraged suicide from despair or depression. Because they knew that as real as these feelings were, as deep as that pain might be, that life was worth living and how easily the mind can become temporarily trapped in prisons of its own making. The Stoics believed that we needed to be here for each other, that we were made for cooperation, and that sometimes we have trou