This Is Your Job Right Now | Practice True Joy

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  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, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  This is your job right now. It's depressing, it's confusing, it's fraught. You don't like where the world is going, you don't like what's happening. What are we supposed to do? Especially when we're so powerless as ordinary citizens, people who do not hold office, people who are matched against billionaires, against madness, against inertia, against so much. "Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being," Marcus Realist writes in Meditations, writing this almost certainly in reaction to his own dysfunctional and cruel times. "Remind yourself what nature demands of people," he added, "then do it without hesitation and speak the truth as you see it." We are not emperors, we are not senators, but we are human beings connected to all other human beings.

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  And our job is to do our job, to do it virtuously and honestly. Our job as citizens is to participate in politics, not to see the field simply because it disappoints and disgusts us. Our job is to help the people we can help closest to us, those that have lost their jobs, those that have been targeted, those who do not have the advantages we have.

• 2:02Ryan Holiday?

  And most of all, per the tradition of the Stoic opposition, which included hallowed figures like Cato and Helvidius and Thrasse and Rutilius Rufus, the job is to courageously speak the truth as we see it, to not go along with lies, to call things what they are, to condemn what deserves condemnation, to stand up for principles and programs that deserve defense, to say who we are, which is good, which is kind, which is very much not on board with any of this, and that even if we can't stop it, we can say clearly and loudly that we do not accept it being done in our name.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  Practice true joy. This is this week's meditation from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living. There is no audiobook of this journal, so the weekly podcast episode is the only way to hear this sort of weekly meditation that we do inside the journal. It's always been weird for me. I don't know if I should call the journal that I wrote a book. It's 20,000 words. It's got writing in it. Is it a journal? Is it a book? In any case, here is today's meditation. "The Stoics held joy to be one of the good passions worthy of practice in everyday life. But Stoic joy isn't about the delights of the senses or material pleasures. To Marcus

• 3:28Ryan Holiday?

  Aurelius, joy was being kind to others. To Seneca, it was freedom from fear or suffering and death. Let's laugh with Democritus, as Seneca says, and engage in our proper human work with joy." So, consider making your study of philosophy this week around the idea of where you might find joy and what good you might find to do with it. And here's Marcus Aurelius on meditations. "Joy for human beings lies in proper human work, and proper human work consists in acts of kindness to other human beings, disdain for the stirring of the senses, and identifying trustworthy impressions, and contemplating the natural order in all that happens in keeping with it." Then we have Seneca in his moral letters. He says-

• 4:12Ryan Holiday?

  Trust me, real joy is a serious thing. Do you think that someone can, in the charming expression, blithely dismiss death with an easy disposition? Or swing open the door to poverty, keeping pleasures in check? Or meditate on the endurance of suffering? The one who is comfortable with turning these thoughts over is truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful. It's exactly such a joy that I would wish for you to possess, for it will never truly run dry once you've laid claim to its source. Finally, we have Seneca in On Tranquility of Mind. He says, "Heracitus would shed tears whenever he went out in public. Democritus laughed. One saw the whole as a parade of miseries, the other of follies. And so we shall take a lighter view of things and bear them with an easy spirit, for it

• 4:57Ryan Holiday?

  is more human to laugh at life than to lament it." There is this sense, right? That the Stoics are joyless, that the Stoics are humorlessness, that the Stoics don't appreciate existence, that they're just here, beasts of burden, unfeeling, and ready to face death with barely a whimper. But I think there's, first off, too much humor in the Stoics, whether it's Marcus Aurelius or Seneca, or of course Chrysippus, who allegedly died laughing at some inside joke whose meaning barely even survives to us. I just don't think that the Stoics were without joy. You could look at Seneca's enormous parties.

• 5:36Ryan Holiday?

  You know, he famously has like 300 ivory tables as hypocrisy, or it could be an insight to a side of the Stoics that perhaps doesn't appear in their writing very much, but clearly was a big part of their existence, which was, you know, socializing and connecting and having fun with people. But I think what the Stoics, what Seneca most of all is trying to say here is that joy is not hedonism, it's not just pure happiness and lightness. The joy comes from that place of resilience, from removing the unnecessary disturbances that cause misery. I'd probably define Stoic joy as the absence of misery that a lot of people experience,

• 6:19Ryan Holiday?

  whether it's fear, or anger, or jealousy, or anxiety. Instead of like, joy is luxury, joy is parties. I think for the Stoics, it was, joy was the absence of the longing for those things, or anything that made you unhappy. But then we have to add in Marcus Aurelius's wrinkle, which I think Marcus truly found, although he seems to be an introverted, quiet person who loved his books, he clearly found joy in being of service, helping people, of making the world better. And we have to see that as a key part of our role. You know, as an introvert myself, I do empathize with that expression,

• 7:01Ryan Holiday?

  that hell is other people, that life is easier when you focus on your stuff. But this is also its own form of misery ultimately, because it makes you lonely, it deprives you of purpose, it deprives you of connection. The Stoics did celebrate joy. They did believe it was an important passion, an important part of life. They just would have disagreed with the Epicureans, who seemed to find joy in external things, external pleasures, external experiences. I think for the Stoics, joy was something deeper. It was a way of living. It was a way of thinking. It was a deeper emanation of self-sufficiency, but also connection, a locking in on one's purpose,

• 7:44Ryan Holiday?

  doing the work that one is put here to do. When Marcus Aurelius says, "The fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good," I think he's also talking about what gives him joy and what makes him happy in this life. And I hope you find the same thing. Seek out joy. Certainly don't disdain joy and certainly don't think that this philosophy is about not experiencing the joy. I wish you much happiness and joy. You deserve it. My life is better when I have it. And it's something that I actually actively have to work on, and so do you.

• 8:19Ryan Holiday?

  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 of 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.