Time is Racing Toward Us | Pete Holmes on The Real Point of Philosophy

We think that it’s off in the distance. We think that it’s far away. But this is wrong. Fundamentally wrong. Reading Marcus Aurelius can change your life, but only if you know how to read his work 👉 Head here now to grab your Meditations book and guide bundle | https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/meditations-month-2026🎥 Watch the full episode with Pete Holmes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiVU3613prw🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Time is racing toward us. We think that it's off in the distance. We think that it's far away, the future, old age, even our own eventual death. But this is wrong, fundamentally wrong. Seneca writes that death is not something we are slowly moving towards, but rather something that is rushing towards us. In fact, it is something that is already here. We are dying every day, he says, for the time that passes belongs to death. We have to understand that there is no fixed point in the future that we are moving towards. There is no later, there is only now. There is this moment, and we have it only fleetingly. We cannot delay, we cannot defer.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  We must live while we can, live while we are dying. Take the present before it becomes the past. There is only what you can do with this moment before it disappears into the past. So don't hesitate, don't delay, live now.

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  People think philosophy is like this way of, is this riddle that like trits you into thinking you don't exist, right? There is no self, how do you know you exist? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And you go, what am I supposed to do with this information? Right. Right? But philosophy is actually more like your, your words hurt me. And then a Stoic goes, how though? Like, show me how. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What Rupert Spire would say is, on whose behalf are you protesting? Yeah. Like, show me that. They're just getting you. I think, obviously, it can be intellectually interesting to sort of take this all the way down to like, how do we know we're not living in a simulation? But for most of us, it should just be more like, yeah, why am I taking offense to this? Or like, why, why am I set?

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  I have to do this like my therapist sometimes corrects me and she goes, no, no. What you make up about this is not this is realizing like, oh, no, no, the thing just is something. And then I have an opinion about that thing. And, and most of the time, a lot of the time that opinion is making me feel shitty or insecure.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  It's almost always making.

• 2:32Ryan Holiday?

  Right. And so it's like, if philosophy is about helping you with that. And then maybe there's some professional mystics who can take it all the way to the, actually, nothing is permanent. Nothing's everlasting. How do we, you know, start with the mental tricks to help you just live better.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47Ryan Holiday?

  You're not going to just suddenly be questioning the purpose of everything and everyone.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Right. I actually think going to the door, the closed door, saying like, we all live in a simulation. Or there is no self, or everything is a dream or whatever.

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  Is there really such thing as right and wrong?

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. That's just going, that, that's just kind of like a, an amusement ride.

• 3:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  And I think, if I'm going to use a spiritual term here, but the ego, the separate self uses that to just seem important. It's the same thing as wearing a Raiders jersey and being like, I'm like these guys.

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Their strength is my strength. And when I go, this is a simulation, you're just kind of bolstering the fake thing.

• 3:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  By going like, you didn't fool me. The purpose of what you would call philosophy, what I would call mysticism, who cares?

• 3:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Is actually to go through that door and to realize that what you seek is only veiled by the seeking of it. So when we're looking for peace and happiness, this is all Rupert Spira, by the way, which one of these has to be him. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. The nature of your being, the nature of awareness is peace. It's the lack of agitation. It's the lack of yearning. It's the lack of seeking. It's the lack of resisting. And then the mind gets activated and we start seeking, oh, I hope this podcast goes well. That's fine. That's, that's dance, that's a play, but it does kind of rob me of my nature. So receding back.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Philosophy for the sake of knowing what's going on and then flexing that for people is stupid.

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  When realizing anything that points you to the nature of the self, the only self there is, being peace, patience, kindness, happiness, joy, that's valuable. I know it's stupid to now step back into our mind and be like, that's valuable. But I did that this morning. I was having a crummy morning. Crummy. And I, you know, I started my day reading Rupert and it reminded me that it was like, it's my seeking for a good day that's keeping me from. It's the analogy that he uses is it's like consciousness or awareness is the screen. And this is the movie. And there's no peace for the characters in the movie. They'll eat sandwiches and feel happy. Sometimes they'll get hit by a car and be sad other times.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  But it's completely in flux all the time. What isn't in flux? The screen. Let's find the screen. Go to the, go to the experience of being aware and don't say, I don't know how to find my being. You're having that experience right now. It's not esoterica. It's go to it. I promise you know how to. That's going to the screen. That's step one. Step two is what is the nature of the screen?

• 5:36Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  And the nature of the screen, just like a screen is spacious. To me, successful spirituality is how spacious are you? Not how good are you at winning a debate or whatever.

• 5:47Ryan Holiday?

  Spatious, you just mean like chill? What do you mean?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Allowing.

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  The nature of the screen, you could say the nature of God, is this yes. It's this, it's, it's, it's almost offensive how yes it is.

• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  And when we realize that we are that yes. I'll give you an example. I took an Uber here and the guy was listening to Christian rock, which happens a lot in Texas.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  And I'm only a little embarrassed to admit that it's, it can be a little triggering to me.

• 6:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Because I grew up in that world and whatever. Those were good, meaning people, but it didn't do me a lot of favors. It kind of confused me and scared me. So when I hear that music, I used to sing that music. I used to lead the worship team. I'm listening to it and I'm like, and I'm like, no. This is just like, let's just try to like, be with what it actually is. And this is the other thing that came to mind. I'm, I'm reading nonviolent communication. I actually guess I could say I've read it. There's a little bit left. And he, he tells a story that really changed, changed. I have other examples of it, but it was a good one. He tells two stories of getting hit in the nose. Maybe you heard me say this on my podcast.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  He got elbowed in the nose twice in the same week. Uh, same force, same blood, same everything. One time it hurt like the dickens, the other time it didn't hurt. Same exact.

• 7:10Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Fracture. And he was like, the first time, he was breaking up for a fight both times. The first time, the kid he was pulling off the other kid, he hated this kid.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  This kid was a shit, a bad student, just a smart ass and had rubbed this guy the wrong way. He hit him in the nose and it really hurt.

• 7:26Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  The second time, it was this sweet kid that he actually had a lot of love and compassion for. Cause he saw that he was kind of picked on and his heart was open to him. Got elbowed by this kid. That's how fast the brain will build a story.

• 7:40Ryan Holiday?

  Right. The interpretation of this person did it because they're bad and this person did it as an accident. And, and that's what I mean. It's like, do you want to, do you want to use this powerful tool to interpret everything down to a kind of nothingness or nihilism? Or do you just want to do it? So you're not taking shit so personally anymore? I'm just saying, most people just take, take the 80, the, the most effective 80% of the thing.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  And leave the 20% to the people who are really into it.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:06Ryan Holiday?

  Don't let the, the, the sort of mystic woo woo part of it. Confuse you or deter you from the fact that the bulk of this is very practical and very helpful.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I understand.

• 8:16Ryan Holiday?

  In the course of your normal life, where you have a job and kids and you're not a monk at a silent meditation retreat.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  I would say that last 20% is bolstering yourself to the point where you can convince other people of it.

• 8:29Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  And win debates. And then, how silly is that? And I'm guilty of this all the time. You've bolstered up something that you just spent all that time convincing yourself doesn't exist.

• 8:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  And Eckhart Tolle talks about that. It's like monks bowing to each other on meditation retreats. That is, that's a little candy.

• 8:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Your special, I bow to you. But also, to your point, let's not get gunked up too much. There's this, I think it's Rumi. He's like, it's gonna be a terrible paraphrase, but he's like, you're in the orchard.

• 8:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Stop asking who planted the orchard and just eat some apples. That's a terrible paraphrase.

• 9:04Ryan Holiday?

  No, in meditation, Marcus Rivas talks about, he says, you don't have to delve into everything that lies beneath. You can just kinda, and I think there's something, Nietzsche was not always a big fan of the Stoics, but he said, sometimes the Stoics were superficial out of profundity. And that there's something about just kind of staying on the surface that's like, hey, I got hit in the nose, you know, or hey, I like this apple. I don't need to know why it came here.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Who planted it, yeah.

• 9:30Ryan Holiday?

  Who planted it? Or just like, hey, the stock market went down today, not the stock market went down and now my portfolio is fucked and now I have to work longer. And then, by the way, why did this happen? It happened because of this policy.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:45Ryan Holiday?

  And it's these idiots who voted for this. It's just like, it's just news. Accept it as information and move on. And if you heard that it happened to someone else, you'd be like, it is what it is. But what happens to you, you just need so much more in the way of explanation and then you need to ruminate on it and you're not really doing yourself any favors.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  That's an epiphany anew, at least once a month, where I go, oh my God, when it's me, it seems to be so meaningful. Like when you're having an issue, I'm like, Ryan, you're just the screen. Like when it's happening to me, I'm like, this is urgent. That's why, like, I'm with you. Everything we've said, what my teacher Rupert Spira teaches is called the pathless path, meaning it's not even a path, meaning it's not even something we need to explain. It's when, whenever. Yeah. Anytime, good times, bad times, just kind of quietly keep a tether in the fact that you are the screen, not to have some sort of afterlife reward or the thrill of

• 10:47Speaker 02

  being smarter than everybody, or like me, listening to the Christian music and being like, I find this theologically unsound.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Good for you, Pete.