Words Count For Nothing | Take A Walk

Today the United States celebrates Juneteenth, the commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in America. Two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and nearly 90 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Union Army troops deployed to Texas, the only state of the Confederacy still with institutional slavery, on June 19, 1865. “The people of Texas are informed,” ordered a Union General, “that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”There’s no question—that military order deserves celebration. This idea of fighting for freedom, of asserting one’s rightful dignity in a cruel or unjust world, is the journey of Epictetus, which we tell in The Girl Who Would Be Free. In the beautifully illustrated, all-ages fable we learn how Epictetus went from a slave to one of the most influential philosophers of all time. This month we are celebrating the 1-year anniversary of the release. If you purchase The Girl Who Would Be Free, we are giving you 75% OFF of The Boy Who Would Be King! We have signed and personalized copies available, so don’t miss out on this fantastic deal!---And in today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt, Ryan discusses why the Stoics preach the values of stepping away from work to take a walk outside.✉️ 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, 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 happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  Today, the United States celebrates Juneteenth, the commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in America. 157 years ago, two years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and nearly 90 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Army troops deployed to Texas, the only state of the Confederacy still with institutional slavery. "The people of Texas are informed," ordered a Union general, "in accordance with a proclamation from the executive of the United States, all slaves are free." There's no question that that military order deserves celebration.

• 1:21Ryan Holiday?

  It asserted absolute equality and began the liberation of hundreds of thousands of human beings. And Marcus Aurelius would write in Meditations that his Stoic role models taught him to conceive of a society of equal laws governed by equality of statute and speech, and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. It's as beautiful a sentence as any written by Thomas Jefferson, but of course, a long way from Epictetus's personal experience. This kind of freedom that Marcus was talking about would have been something inconceivable to the early Stoics, who themselves lived in a slave society and tragically did very little to stop it.

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  Like Jefferson's writings, Marcus Aurelius's passage was just that, an idea, not a reality. In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt would remind his fellow citizens of the critical distinction between words and deeds. In name, we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he said, but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865. And he said, "Words count for nothing, except insofar as they represent acts." This is true everywhere. Or, as the Latin expression goes, "Acta non verba," deeds not words. It's wonderful to celebrate these principles from the Stoics and the founders.

• 2:49Ryan Holiday?

  It's wonderful to note the moments of historical progress like Juneteenth. But we have to remember that beautiful language pales in comparison to beautiful acts. We have to turn these words, these ideas, into deeds. Can't just talk about them. We have to be about them. And not living up to them or doing something about them, as was the case with slavery in Rome and America, is ugly. Marcus knew this but fell short, damning himself with his own words in Meditations, "That you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also." We must make sure today that we are not guilty the same. And this idea of fighting for freedom, of asserting one's rightful dignity in a cruel

• 3:33Ryan Holiday?

  or unjust world, that is the journey of Epictetus.

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  Take a walk. Seneca believed that we should take frequent wandering walks because constant work will fracture our minds. As a writer, he would have agreed with the novelist Helen Dunmore, "A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk." So take some good time this week to take some walks and watch the dullness and feebleness depart. Enjoy the scenery, enjoy being away from your work. Make them part of your morning and evening writing routine. Return with a stimulated mind that's ready to journal about and follow the philosophy you know. You think that it's taking a break, but really, you end up smarter and clearer than you were when you left.

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  And that's from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. And as Seneca says, "We should take wandering walks so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed by the open air and deep breathing." That's in his essay on Tranquility of Mind. But Marcus Aurelius says, "Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature, and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth." That's Meditations 448. And then Seneca again in On Tranquility of Mind. "The mind must be given relaxation; it will rise improved and sharper after a good break. Just as rich fields must not be forced, for they will quickly lose their fertility if

• 5:16Ryan Holiday?

  never given a break, so constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind. But it regains its powers if it is set free and relaxed for a while. Constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul." I actually just posted this the other day. I was saying, "There's no problem so bad that taking a walk can't at least help you solve a little bit of it." And I also feel like I've never regretted deciding to get up and take a walk. My morning routine is built around it. As I've said before, I don't touch my phone in the morning. I strap my kids in this stroller and we go for a walk. It's about a mile and a half to the mailboxes at the end of the road, little P O boxes for everyone there.

• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

  And we've done this hundreds and hundreds of times now. It occurred to me that since my kids were born, I've probably walked, ridden, or run several thousand miles with them. And this distance we've covered, it's not just good for health. It's not just getting out and getting sunlight, but it's refreshing, it's quality time together, it's time not spent struggling with some work thing. And yet, I almost invariably return with something to write down, with something I remembered I need to do during the day, with some sense of purpose and energy for the day.

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  And during the pandemic, we got so into these walks, not only do I do the one in the morning, then I sometimes do walks on phone calls during the day around the Daily Stoic offices and the Painted Porch bookstore here in Bastrop, Texas. I love walking through these little southern towns. It's always beautiful and shady because they planted the trees so long ago. But then we usually go for a walk after dinner. Sometimes our kids take a popsicle or, you know, my wife and I have a piece of chocolate. During April and May, we like to pick blackberries on the walk. But we just, we walk around, we, sometimes we watch the sun come down. You know, we watch the deer run or we look at the cows or pet the donkeys. Sometimes we bring the donkeys carrots, although most of the time our kids eat the carrots before we get there.

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  But, but the point is this time outside is wonderful and it's philosophical and it's refreshing and it's one of the most important things that I do. So I hope you will take some walks today. It's one of the best exercises you can do. It's also one of the best forms of exercise for your mind. So take a walk, the Stoics demand it.