It Keeps Coming and Won’t Stop Coming

"In March, Brent Underwood thought he’d found the perfect place to ride out the pandemic: a small California ghost town he’d been slowly renovating and turning into a resort. It was safe and isolated, beautiful and quiet. Then a freak series of snow storms trapped him there in Cerro Gordo for weeks with dwindling supplies and no running water. His retreat turned suddenly into a prison. Then he had a bout with appendicitis that required him to drive himself 2 hours to the closest clinic. As we’ve said before, life comes at you fast."Hear the rest of the story in today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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 at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  It keeps coming, and it won't stop coming. In March, Brent Underwood thought he'd found the perfect place to ride out the pandemic, a small California ghost town he'd been slowly renovating and turning into a resort. It was safe and isolated, beautiful and quiet. Then a freak series of snowstorms trapped him there in Saragordo for weeks with dwindling supplies and no running water. His retreat turned suddenly into a prison, and then he had a bout of appendicitis that put him in the hospital for multiple days. As we've said before, life comes at you fast. Indeed, that's what Brent told us on a recent episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. But then it seemed that things were getting back to normal.

• 1:12Ryan Holiday?

  The rest of the snow melted. He helped us launch our Live Time Dead Time Challenge, which raised money for victims of the pandemic. Work progressed on the town. Media attention poured in. Last week, The New York Times profiled him and the town in a long-awaited piece. And then, before he even had time to send the article to his family, the town's crown jewel, the American Hotel, burned to the ground, exactly 149 years from the day it had opened, from triumph to disaster in a matter of hours. Seneca himself tells the story of Rome burning to the ground and how the city of Lyons came to her aid with a large donation, just as some friends of Brent have set up a GoFundMe page to rebuild

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  the hotel. But little did Lyons know that within a year, Rome would be returning the favor because Lyons itself had burned. These are the lessons we must take from history as well as from current events. Life is un- Predictable, yet somehow very predictable. Life comes at us fast. It doesn't stop. It puffs us up and it brings us low. It blesses and it curses us. All we can do is be ready. All we can do is pick up the pieces and keep going. And if you want to follow the journey of the rebuilding of Cerro Gordo, you can check it out on Instagram. It's cerro.gordo.ca. And of course, if you're interested in contributing to the GoFundMe, I'm sure Brent would appreciate

• 2:40Ryan Holiday?

  that. Just search Cerro, that's C-E-R-R-O, Gordo, G-O-R-D-O, and GoFundMe and it should pop right up. I hope everyone else has slightly better luck over the next few months.