This Can Drive You Nuts, Or You Can Learn To Love It

You clean and then it gets dirty. You do the dishes and then five minutes later, the sink is full again. You made it through your inbox in the morning and by the time late afternoon strikes, you’re already digging yourself out again. Literally before you’ve even finished putting the dog’s toys away, they’re splayed out across the floor. Just as you put the finishing touches on that big project, another is dropped on your plate. You finally organize your kids’ clothes and now they’ve grown out of them. This can drive you nuts. Or you can learn to love it.✉️ 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.📱 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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

• 0:30Ryan Holiday?

  You clean, and then it gets dirty. You do the dishes, and then five minutes later, the sink is full again. You've made it through your inbox in the morning, and by the time late afternoon strikes, you're already digging yourself out again. Literally, before you've even finished putting the dog's toys away, they've splayed them out across the floor. Just as you put the finishing touches on that big project, another is dropped on your lap. You finally organize your kid's clothes, and now they've grown out of all of them. This can drive you nuts, or you can learn to love it. In Tibet, Buddhist monks make beautiful mandalas out of sand. They spent hours, even days, crafting these complex geometric designs, only to wipe them clean and start over as soon as they're finished.

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  And isn't that a way that we might see all the work we do? Might that be a way to go through life? It's not about cleaning the house, or finishing this, or that. It's about the mandala, an unending ephemeral process that we begin again, and again, and again. In fact, that's what Marcus Aurelius said, again, and again, and again. "The universe is nothing but change. Everything is constantly in flux. Nothing lasts. Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it," he reminded himself. "Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity." The dishes, the desk, the dog's toys, your inbox, the weight you lose and gain and lose, these things are never done, or clean,

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  or organized, or set. No, entropy is always at work. You are at work. Your growth is at work. So, we should not feel exasperated or frustrated by it. We should love the flow of it. It's not work we're doing. It's art. To be finished would mean the end of this, the end of our lives. No, we like that it's a little bit like Groundhog's Day, because it means a chance to wake up and live again, to do it beautifully. To do it well.