You Could Leave Life Today. What Would You Do Differently?

The end of the year has a way of reminding us that nothing lasts forever. In today’s episode, you will hear a deep dive into the Stoic practice of Memento Mori https://dailystoic.com/history-of-memento-mori-art/, the reminder that you could leave life at any moment. Not as something dark or depressing, but as a way to sharpen your focus on what actually matters. You will hear conversations with psychologists, grief experts, and artists who have all confronted mortality in very real ways. From near death moments and personal loss to ancient Stoic wisdom that still holds up today, this reminder helps make you more present, more patient, and more intentional with your time. 🎙️ Listen to the full episodes: Think About Death. Science Says You’ll Be Happier. | Dr. Laurie Santos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8OARstQGfMDavid Kessler on Finding Meaning in Grief and Practicing the Art of Memento Mori https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/david-kessler-on-finding-meaning-in-grief-and/id1430315931?i=1000670987546EGO, DEATH, FAME: Lamb Of God's Randy Blythe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_JNtgzPTLE 📚 Books Mentioned: Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/dying-every-day-seneca-at-the-court-of-neroFinding Meaning https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=david+kessler* and the Finding Meaning Workbook https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=david+kessler* by David Kessler Just Beyond The Light by Randy Blythe https://www.amazon.com/Just-Beyond-Light-Making-Inside/dp/0306828189Dark Days by Randy Blythe https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Days-D-Randall-Blythe-ebook/dp/B00NP8MDWW?ref_=ast_author_dp&th=1&psc=1 🪙 We have a collection of items in the Daily Stoic storeto help you in your own memento mori practice https://store.dailystoic.com/collections/memento-mori, check them out here:https://store.dailystoic.com/collections/memento-morihttps://store.dailystoic.com/ 👉 Dr. Laurie Santos is an expert on the science of happiness and the ways in which our minds lie to us about what makes us happy. Listen to Dr. Laurie’s podcast, The Happiness Lab https://www.drlauriesantos.com/happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos-podcast, where she shares the latest scientific research on what it means to be truly happy. Check out more of Dr. Laurie’s work at DrLaurieSantos.com http://drlauriesantos.com and follow her Instagram @LaurieSantosOfficial https://www.instagram.com/lauriesantosofficial/?hl=en, X @LaurieSantos https://x.com/lauriesantos, and on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFfUSTVKFCfXl6PVyG08zxg and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@drlauriesantos @DrLaurieSantos 👉 David Kessler, a grief and loss expert. David co-authored two books with Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, including On Grief and Grieving https://www.amazon.com/Grief-Grieving-Finding-Meaning-Through/dp/1476775559and after experiencing the death of his son, he updated her 5 stages of grief with a 6th stage: meaning. Follow David Kessler on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamdavidkessler/?hl=en and X https://x.com/IamDavidKessler?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor| @IAmDavidKessler https://www.instagram.com/iamdavidkessler/?hl=en 👉 Randy Blythe is the lead singer of Lamb of God https://www.lamb-of-god.com/tour/. Follow Randy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drandallblythe/?hl=en and X https://x.com/drandallblythe?lang=en@DRandallBlythe https://www.instagram.com/drandallblythe/?hl=enand check out his Substack https://randonesia.substack.com/ No more waiting. Demand the best for yourself. The Daily Stoic New Year New You https://join.dailystoic.com/nyny26/ challenge begins January 1, 2026. Learn more and sign up today at dailystoic.com/challenge http://dailystoic.com/challenge 🎁 This holiday season, give the gift of Daily Stoic Premium | https://dailystoic.supercast.com/gifts/new 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en:https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store:https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You know, it's this time of year, we're with family. We're reflecting, we're thinking about what we're grateful for, enjoying the weather, maybe we're off work a little bit. And it's the perfect time, right? This cheerful, wonderful time of year to meditate on the fact that we're all, we're all gonna die. We are all going to die. And this was a year where I had to face that up close and personal. Not just I lost a dear friend in co-traveling, but when I was on a run in Greece, well, I very nearly died. Here, I'll give it to you in real time. This is what happened. I almost died a few days ago, where I very easily could have died.

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  I just got stung inside the mouth by a bee. So this is it for me. Tell my family I love them. Jesus Christ. At the very least, I had to think about my mortality in a very real and tangible way. I'm freaking out. And it's an absurd story. I'm in Athens, Greece with my family. I get up early. I go for a run. I am loving life. I am feeling great. Things are going awesome. I'm watching the sun come up. I'm looking out at the Aegean. I'm maybe four and a half miles into what was supposed to be a six mile run. And then some disgusting bug flies in my mouth. But it's not just any bug. It's a bee. And it stings me in the back of the throat. I'm

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  not super allergic to bees, but I have had allergic reactions to them in the past. And I just read a news story a few days ago about a famous polo player in the UK dropping dead of anaphylactic shock after being stung in the mouth by a bee. And one of the most important people in my life, my mentor, the great Robert Greene, had a stroke after being stung in the neck by a bee. So it was this surreal experience. Three days before, I'd just run from marathon to Athens. I'd spent weeks training for this thing. I'd been running. I'd been outside. I was worried about getting hit by a car. I was worried about getting lost. I was worried, you know, maybe you end up in a

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  bad neighborhood. I was worried, do you overexert yourself or get sunstroke? I was worried about everything but this thing. I didn't end up in an ambulance, but we had to contemplate calling one. No priest gave me my last rites. But I did have to seriously think about what the worst case scenario here is. Where is this going to go? And the answer was my throat could constrict, cut off breathing. I could go into anaphylactic shock. As I'm sitting there waiting for people to get back to us, waiting for the hotel to bring ice, waiting to hear back from the doctor, I thought, of course, of philosophy. Because this is what philosophy is. The point of philosophy, Cicero said, was to learn how

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  to die. It's for moments like this, to contemplate not just why we're here, but to face the very real and terrifying fact that at some point we go, and we don't control how, or when, or why. That's what the practice of memento mori is. And for many years, I've carried this memento mori coin with me. You could leave life right now, it says on the back from Marcus Schrilleus. Let that determine what you do and say and think. So anyways, I didn't die, thankfully, or I wouldn't be here recording. But it's a reminder, right? Life is fragile. We can go. At any moment, this is a theme the Stoics talk about over and over and over again, so much so that actually, there's a translation of Seneca by James Rahm,

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  Professor James Rahm at Bard, who we've had on the podcast, whose biography of Seneca I also love, but the translation, collection, compilation of Seneca just called How to Die. That's how much Seneca talks about it. In fact, Tacitus would say that Seneca is preparing his whole life, preparing, rehearsing for the moment that Nero's goons finally come for him. And I do have to say, it flashed through my mind, as that bee stung me in the back of the throat, that this would be both an anticlimactic and an absurd and almost perfect way to go. I could, I could almost imagine myself on the Wikipedia page for unusual deaths for Stoic philosophy also,

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  you know, just like Chrysippus dies of laughter, Ryan Holiday, modern popularizer, writer of books about Stoic philosophy, dies by bee sting to the throat. But I will say what flashed through my mind there when I got back to my hotel and I found my wife just sitting on her phone, not responding to my texts, because she just woke up and she didn't want to deal with my shit just yet. I was like, oh, you know, if, if I do have 20, 30 minutes left, whatever, let's get in the pool with my son, who'd been asking to do that all morning. So it just puts everything in perspective. And, and I'm actually serious, this is the time of year we should be

• 5:49Ryan Holiday?

  getting that perspective. So in today's episode, we are going to meditate on our mortality, which by the way, if you've read the Daily Stoic Book, the whole month of December is Memento Mori themed. So in today's episode, we are diving into Memento Mori, which is a theme we've talked about on the podcast all year and for many years. And first up, we're going to hear from Dr. Laurie Santos. Dr. Santos is an expert on the science of happiness and the ways in which our minds lie to us about what makes us happy. Her class at Yale, Psychology in the Good Life, is one of the most popular courses in Yale's history, which is, by the way, a 300-year history, almost one out of every four students at the school. Has enrolled in it.

• 6:32Ryan Holiday?

  And the class is about how the science of psychology can provide important hints on how to make wiser choices and live a happier life, which, by the way, so can Stoic philosophy. And I actually learned about Dr. Laurie Santos because someone told me that she was on a podcast talking about her memento mori ring. And here is my nine-year-old Clark Holliday, who has burst into the room as I'm recording this podcast intro. What's up, buddy?

• 6:56Ryan Holiday?

  Why do you need my phone? What? Did mom say you could have it? No? Okay. Wait, wait, wait, Clarky. Shut the door, though, on your way out. Don't get into too much trouble. Well, that's just an insight into my life. So back to what I was saying. I learned about Dr. Santos because she was on Huberman, maybe, talking about her memento mori ring. So here is Dr. Laurie Santos and I talking about that.

• 7:24Ryan Holiday?

  I thought you might have your memento mori ring on.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  I took it off to travel because I'm scared I'm going to lose it. So, which is dumb. I also have another second arrow, so it's an arrow. So that's my Buddhist one, my memento mori one and a Buddhist one.

• 7:35Ryan Holiday?

  Well, tell me the story on both. Memento mori, remember you will die. Why is that something you want to wear on your person?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Because it's nice to remember that you're going to die, right? I mean, no, seriously. I mean, I think it like causes you to live better. And there's research showing this too, right? That fast forwarding to your death, this idea of death awareness, noticing that things might go away soon, you wind up like enjoying things more. Whether it's like a local thing, like they do this with like college seniors who are about to graduate and just notice, hey, you're going to graduate really soon. They spend their time differently when you remind them.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  But I think for bigger things for life, too. This is like, I mean, this is what the Stoics were on top of, like before anybody did these social science studies about this stuff. But yeah.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  Isn't it interesting how much social science studies confirm just hypotheses or arguments from ancient philosophy that they were just making up 2,000 years ago?

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yes. And even still, like I have a colleague, Hedy Kober, who studies meditation and a lot of kind of ancient practice from Buddhists. And I was like, you need to go do Stoicism. So she's doing a negative visualization.

• 8:33Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Studies now to try to see if that also can like, she just studies like craving and these kinds of things. Can it reduce craving? Can it make you feel better and so on? But I'm like, still, new insights from them are coming in and.

• 8:44Ryan Holiday?

  So do you just kind of fiddle with the ring?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  I do, yeah.

• 8:46Ryan Holiday?

  Is there something you run through in your mind?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Actually, another reason I don't take it to podcasts is I thwack it, you know? I have to take it. Yeah, you notice it every once in a while and then you, this is another one I got, which this came from Arthur Brooks, who I know you had on your show.

• 8:58Ryan Holiday?

  I think he was wearing a very similar.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so his work with the Dalai Lama, he hangs out with these monks who.

• 9:02Ryan Holiday?

  Did you go on that trip?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I did not. I had a wedding and I was like, can you move the wedding? But I met one of the monks who was there and because of the work, they gave me this. And so it's blessed by the Dalai Lama and it's meant to remind you that you're on the path to being a Bodhisattva. And it is true that I'll be like, like literally today, driving over here, trying to get out of the main part of Austin City. And I looked at it, it was about your road rage and I was like, no, I want to path to being a Bodhisattva, control of this. And so, yeah, so the reminders help, yeah.

• 9:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I don't know if people agree. People find momentum mori morbid, people find it disconcerting, depressing. There's a reason that people don't do it, that they don't want to think about.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Oh, it's disturbing. I mean, I think it's partly the disturbingness that makes it so powerful.

• 9:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Right? It like makes me a little want to like vomit in my mouth every time I think about it, but it also makes me want to put my phone away and notice the things around me and have a conversation with someone. So, yeah, I think it works because it's really discombobulating.

• 10:01Ryan Holiday?

  And you can get desensitized to it itself a little bit. And what I think is interesting, which has never been desensitized for me, is the one that Marcus Schreiber talks about in Meditations, which he's cribbing from Epictetus. He says, as you tuck your child in at night, say to yourself, they will not make it till the morning.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:17Ryan Holiday?

  So there's something about momentum mori for yourself, you just be like, yeah, of course I'm going to die, I always knew this, hopefully. But, but it's when, if you have to meditate on losing someone or something so precious to you, you never become desensitized to that. It is always a very powerful, sobering, humbling and a little bit terrifying thought to run through your mind. And there's something about the human mind that doesn't want to consider it precisely because of all those things.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. But what's amazing about the human mind is that you can just instantly switch your reference point with a little bit of imagination, right? And I think this was one of the Stoic insights, like if you actually have a bad thing happen to you, that changes your reference point. Like I actually lose my phone, like while on this trip, oh my God, this is a pain in the butt, I gotta get, I never realized how much I appreciated my phone. But I get the new phone. It's like, oh, a phone. It's so useful. I can look at the map and so on.

• 11:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  But what's amazing is we don't actually have to go through the actual terrible thing. We can just simulate it very briefly.

• 11:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  And this is, I think Marcus Aurelius' insight, right? Like, every morning you should wake up and think, I might, you know, get shunned. I might lose my job. I might lose my, my legs won't work and stuff. And I think that, that's amazing that we have the power to do that, that we don't actually have to face the real consequences, but we can psychologically reset our reference point. It's such a good hack.

• 11:30Ryan Holiday?

  Well, what's interesting is we use our imagination in a way that's not helpful all the time.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 11:34Ryan Holiday?

  So we imagine a bunch of extremely unlikely, uh, you know, fake things. We're ruminating on stuff that nobody's thinking about, and we're torturing ourselves with our imagination. Instead of using our imagination to prepare for things, like oftentimes, if you act like, if you just kind of have this vague imagining of a terrible thing, you feel unpleasant. But if you can get specific with it and you go, well, what would I do? Here's what my plan, actually, it has the exact opposite effect. So you sort of decide how you're going to use your imagination.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  And this is a critique that I sometimes get from my students. I talk about these negative visualization, psychology studies in my happiness class. And I'll always get a student who stays after class and is like, but wait, isn't rumination terrible? Isn't that like the worst symptom of, you know, depressive episodes? And I'm like, Marcus Aurelius didn't say, like, do that 14 hours a day. He said, like, first 10 minutes right before the war, it'll, you know, like, do that quickly. And then recognize that that's not true, appreciate and move on. And I think that's where we get stuck, right? Is that we have to know the dosage of some of these practices and that can get a little tricky, including the Memento mori, right? A terrible health anxious paranoia that you're going to die.

• 12:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Is not awesome.

• 12:43Ryan Holiday?

  Right. Hypochondria is not the, the, supposed to be the result.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Correct. I think the Stoics were good about giving us that sort of dosage, but in practice, that's, that's where the, the rubber meets the rubber.

• 12:54Ryan Holiday?

  Sophocene is like the right amount.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:56Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Like, no, the ability to discern is also, it's interesting that the line between like, where is sort of temperance, where is wisdom? But they're the same, they're related. It's like, what is the golden mean of this exercise, this truth, this idea? Because when you hear Seneca, on the one hand, say, you know, we suffer more in imagination than in reality. And then he also says, "He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary." He says, like, "The unexpected blow lands heaviest." And then he's also saying, like, "Don't torture yourself with every possible thing that could happen." People feel like that's a contradiction. And I think oftentimes, that is a critique of the Stoics, that they contradict each other. What they're actually saying is, "Not

• 13:38Ryan Holiday?

  too much over here, and not too little over here. Get the right amount, even on something like, 'Hey, am I prepared for things to not go my way?'" Is very different than ruminating on how they're never gonna go your way.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And I think, you know, if you, this is, I love the Stoics, but I also like bringing in these other kinds of traditions too, right? Like, if you look to Aristotle, this was something that Aristotle was really worried about, the kind of right amount. Like, virtue isn't one thing or the other. It's not kind of bravery or cowardice. It's this lovely, sweet spot in the middle. And so, yeah, so I think that the right amount is something that we should be thinking about a lot.

• 14:11Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's the problem with the word temperance, is that temperance in America, not even in English, but the temperance movement became the abstinence movement.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Smash your bottles of rye.

• 14:23Ryan Holiday?

  Exactly. I mean, none, not, what is the right amount? What is a moderate, safe, reasonable amount? And that's a hard, I mean, look, there's some things-

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Be fair, it's hard, right?

• 14:35Ryan Holiday?

  Not at all. Some things you should definitely not do. There's probably not a moderate amount of heroin that you should be doing.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:41Ryan Holiday?

  Or fentanyl or something. But, but there are other things that if you can do them in moderation, it's totally fine. And I think ruminating is probably one of those things, because there's a fine line between ruminating and being ignorant.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things I think the Stoics would say is that you're the main principle of, like, finding agency over your own mind, finding agency over your own emotions, finding agency over your own actions. Like, they almost want you to be probably in that hard, sweet spot of sorting it out for yourself, right? That's the kind of virtue that the Stoics want you to cultivate.

• 15:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you want to be prepared for things to go wrong, but also not a cynical miserable, you know, because I don't believe in manifestation, but I do believe like if you have a fundamentally negative worldview, the world will be negative to you. I don't think you're changing reality, but if you only look for the worst, you're going to find a lot of bad stuff.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  OK, but this is a spot where my students also get it confused. And I think it is really confusing psychologically, right? Because on the one hand, we know thinking about the worst helps you a little bit in all the ways we were just talking about. We also know that optimism helps you a little bit, but it also has these interesting downsides, right? In the manifesting work, there's lots of work, like folks like Gabriel Ottingen, that if you fantasize about a positive future a lot, you take less action towards that positive future.

• 15:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  So she uses these studies where like, you know, you fantasize about getting fit and going to the gym all the time. You think, oh, my gosh, it's gonna be so great. I'm gonna fit in my clothes and look great, whatever. But then the more you fantasize about it, the less you actually go to the gym.

• 16:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  And this too comes from a weird feature of imagination, which is that if we've imagined a goal, we don't want that goal as much anymore. There's this lovely study by this guy, Carrie Morwedge, who has people either imagining putting quarters into a vending machine over and over again, really slowly, or slowly eating M and M's one by one. And then at the end of the study, people come out and there's a big vat of M and M's.

• 16:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  What does he find? He finds that people that imagine the quarters eat less M and M's because they kind of feel like if you imagined eating all the M and M's, you're kind of satisfied by them. You don't need them anymore, right?

• 16:43Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  And this is what happens with certain kinds of positive fantasies. We imagine that we already went to the gym and got all the benefits. It's like, well, I don't need to put action into that.

• 16:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think for me, the memento mori thing is it's not that you are going to die tomorrow, but that you could.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:59Ryan Holiday?

  And the goodness puts a level of uncertainty and then it forces you to make some decisions. I think that's kind of how I think about it.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  That's right. And I think those decisions ultimately are ones that make us a lot happier, right? The decisions are usually to be a little bit more present, to not fall for the like, you know, low value, you know, dopamine hit in the current parlance, even though it's not really a dopamine hit. Like this is a kind of low value, quick, like I'm looking at my phone rather than hanging out with a kid right before he goes to bed. Right. And those changes matter a lot. Those changes matter a lot for our moment to moment happiness. But I think those changes matter a lot for really appreciating the stuff we have in life, which again, you know, as the Stoics so lovingly pointed out, like is not guaranteed at any point.

• 17:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. The, the like, hey, should we extend the vacation one day or hey, should I blow off work and go spend an extra bit of time for this first, should I take this phone call? It's the, it could be the last time that you get that thing.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 17:52Ryan Holiday?

  And so you should probably seize it while it's here. That is, I think, just a real practical way of moment to moment helps you make better day to day decisions.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  It also changes our time horizon, right? Like psychologists often worry about these cases of myopia, right? Where you're not saving enough, you're not eating healthy enough, you're not protecting your future self. I, from a happiness standpoint, worry a lot about the opposite, which is hyperopia, which is like, we're constantly saying, I'm doing something for my future self. Right. But we both get our future self wrong and sometimes like the future isn't guaranteed. So, you know, take the reward, take that fun thing now, you know? You know, how many times like do people not end up spending their frequent flyer miles and they expire? Or you know, buy this nice bottle of wine that you and your partner are going to have one day and then you finally find it and it's like corked or something.

• 18:36Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  I feel like we're constantly in danger of corking our lives.

• 18:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Even in these local domains. I mean, I've heard you use the example of your, you know, kids going to bed and that, you know, Stoic mantra, helping you notice and be present. What would you be doing if you weren't being present? Well, you'd probably be checking an email for something like future you was trying to get some more.

• 18:54Ryan Holiday?

  Not important at all.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 18:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  And so fighting our hyperopia and making sure, you know, we're prioritizing things in the present so that we get the right future benefit, I think is important.

• 19:04Ryan Holiday?

  I've never met someone who's not saving for retirement, not taking care of themselves because they have philosophically worked themselves into that position.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:13Ryan Holiday?

  They're not doing that because they're just not responsible. It's not a philosophical point of view. I do think this is a trouble with some philosophy and some people, people like they, they try to like overthink it. And for these edge cases that aren't real or would affect such a minority of the, it's like, it's like people don't want to work out because they Don't want to be too fit.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:33Ryan Holiday?

  You're you're not going to get there. Don't worry about it, you know? And it's like, you know, if everyone actually put in this ancient philosophical practice, social security would go bankrupt. And it's like, no, okay. First off, it's automatically taken out of everyone's account. It's not a choice. That's why. But like, no, the people that are not doing it are doing it for other irresponsible reasons, not for an extreme philosophical principle.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I do feel like hyperopia is one of the, you know, people who are a little philosophically informed are thinking about how to live a good life. They're often the ones that are pretty good at like discounting, right? Like, you know, withholding. But then if you do that too much, you know? Again, none of us know when our moment is. And the moment to worry is just a reminder of like, could be tonight.

• 20:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  What I want to do different if it was.

• 20:16Ryan Holiday?

  Well, how many of these people that are obsessed with sort of radical life extension have a life worth extending? Seneca talks about this story about this emperor, this criminal sort of begging to be spared, like, don't put me to death. And and he says, oh, you're really alive? That's what the emperor says to him. He's like, you've you have wasted your life. You're a shitty person doing shitty things. And now you're begging to be spared. To do what? So you can go back to your life of crime? This is not a statement on the justice of the death penalty. The point is, when I look at the life that these people are trying to extend, I'm like, what? You're living like a monk, but not in a philosophical way.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yes. You know, like getting, you know, random injections. And you can't hang out with people because when you hang out with people, you're going to have a drink or go out and have some food. You're going to eat real food.

• 21:01Ryan Holiday?

  The sun because you're worried about this. Like, what you're doing is stripping all the reasons for existence out of existence to then prolong the existence. So maybe in the future, you'll someday be happy. You could be happy now.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  And I think they're getting the evidence wrong. I think a lot of the evidence for that form of longevity comes from like, I don't know, supplement research, like what? But if you look psychologically at the kinds of things that extend longevity, it is happiness in the moment.

• 21:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Your social connections, right? The good that you're doing in the world, the sense of purpose and value, right? These are the things that extend life when you're faced with terminal illnesses and so on. And so it's like, I think they're doing it for the wrong reasons. They're going to get a long life that's not very valuable. But I also think they're missing out. If really what your goal was longevity, you might actually just want. Happy life in the moment because that would work for you.

• 21:43Ryan Holiday?

  Have you ever talked to someone who's really old, like 90 to 100 or whatever? I've talked to many of them and first off, they don't talk about being old. They don't talk about wanting to live longer and they're not even particularly pumped that they're still alive. To be perfectly honest, I don't mean like their life is depressing, but, but one of the striking things about someone you meet, anyone over a hundred, they are not clinging to life.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:05Ryan Holiday?

  They are not like, I hope I make it to 112. I need two more years to get this stuff done. What they actually are is day to day. And like I knew this guy, Richard Overton in Austin, he was 112 and I asked him if he takes it day by day. And he said, at my age, you take it day by night. He's like, look, I just, if I live through the evening, if I wake up tomorrow, that's like defying the odds once again. In fact, it can sometimes be painful if you love these people. They're like, I'm ready to go. And you're like, don't say that.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:35Ryan Holiday?

  Because you're not ready for them to go.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:37Ryan Holiday?

  But they have gotten to a place where life is no longer so precious to them. And that's probably part of it, but it's just interesting to me that when you talk to the people who have, it's like, I guess this is also true for wealth. When you, you talk to the people who have it, they're like, it's not that great. I'd trade it for X, Y, or Z. And then the, the people that are obsessed with life expectancy are often neglecting the present moment at the expense of some optimized future.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And ultimately, like when you get there, you might be happier than you think, no matter what you optimized, right? I think this is another stunning thing is that as people, as people get older, but specifically as people get closer to death, they wind up being more positive rather than less. And one of the cute studies that looked at this, I mean, just talking about a structural issue that we should, you know, talk about and fight about. But it looked at people on death row, right? Where for older individuals, probably they're getting closer to that last moment, but we don't know when it's going to be. Unfortunately, with individuals on death row, we can measure it. And so researchers look at people's journals, their expressions and things as they get closer. And rather than getting more negative, they actually get substantially more positive.

• 23:42Ryan Holiday?

  Cause the anger, the frustration, the fear, it just dissipates because what's the point?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  You're working out, right? I think we don't actually know why it is, but it seems like psychologically what happens is you wind up. Kind of happier. And if you look at kind of death row notes, because often people will write, you know, know about their situation, whatever, like way more strongly, like two to one strongly positive words and other oriented words like kindness and their connection and the meaning they've gotten and so on. Like, it's not like me, me-

• 24:09Ryan Holiday?

  It probably turns down the noise on the trivial shit. They're not like, this guy stole this thing from my bunk, you know, like the, just the things you're holding on to when there's an eternity. There's a story Lincoln tells, this guy in his town who hated this other guy, they hated each other and he finds out he has some terminal illness. And so he reaches out and he says, I want to make amends. And so the guy comes in, he sees him and they make amends. And as the former enemy is leaving, he says, hey, I just want you to know, if I survive this, the grudge is back.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  It's back.

• 24:42Ryan Holiday?

  And like, there's something about the silliness of what we cling to that the ephemerality of life renders insignificant. And I imagine whether you're sitting on death row, you just found out you have cancer, or you're 95, you're just like, meh.

• 25:10Ryan Holiday?

  All right. So in the fall of 2024, I actually don't remember when the episode came out, but I think this is, this feels like a 2025 thing. We had a grief expert on the podcast. His name is David Kessler. And it was a credibly moving, powerful conversation, especially, you know, my kids just burst into the room as I was recording. Well, David's personal experience with grief started very young. As a child, he witnessed a mass shooting while his mother was dying in the hospital. And then he lost his 21 year old son very suddenly, many years later. And so his job, what he does is he teaches physicians and nurses and counselors and police about end of life trauma and grief. He's a beautiful writer. He actually wrote two books with Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross, if you know about

• 25:55Ryan Holiday?

  the stages of grieving. So he's an expert with a lot of hands on personal experience with that. And he has actually added a sixth stage of grief, which he calls meaning. So here is my conversation with David Kessler.

• 26:11Ryan Holiday?

  So people read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and sometimes the knock on Marcus Aurelius is that it's depressing. And lately, just been saying, you're right. Do you know what Marcus Aurelius's life was? He lost his father at a young age. He gets taken from his childhood home and he becomes the emperor. And he buries six children. Five children lived to adulthood, six died. So of 11 children, more than half of them died. He lives through a plague. He lives through flood. He loses his wife. How does this guy get out of bed every morning? I mean, like, it's depressing because life can be depressing. But also, when you realize that he did get out of bed every morning,

• 26:56Ryan Holiday?

  that he did keep going, it's this testament, profound testament to the resilience and the perseverance of the human spirit. And so that's what human beings do, is that they move through grief and loss and keep going.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  And one of the things I put in this is that I put the hero's journey in there.

• 27:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  And, you know, I want people to understand, we all go through those horrible dark nights. And how mapped out it is that like, in the beginning of the journey, you're sure there's no end.

• 27:30Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the refusal to the call, the refusal to the call is the denial.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Right, right, exactly. And you go into that, and there's, you know, the enemies and the hell, I mean, it's all. And one of the things I did, because, I mean, so many people don't know the hero's journey, is I literally go, all right, you've seen it in Star Wars and the Hunger Games.

• 27:49Ryan Holiday?

  Every great story ever.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  I did like, here's the hero's journey. Here's Star Wars hero's journey, because you can go, oh, yeah, Luke's parents died, and all that. And then you can go to, let's map out yours.

• 28:03Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  And here's the hero's journey. At the end of it, my son is still dead.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  And I'm forever changed.

• 28:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  I'm still me. And each of us is the hero of our own life, of what we've gone through. And you just don't often get that until you're dark night. And everyone else has been going through theirs, too.

• 28:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. There is something, though, about being a parent that I think makes you uniquely vulnerable. Joan Didion, you know, this is her table.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 28:43Ryan Holiday?

  And these are her chairs.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 28:44Ryan Holiday?

  Like, she sat at this table with the fam-- there's a New York Times picture of that family, the one that was, in the course of 18 months, taken from her, sitting at this table and these chairs. And she said something about how being a parent is like being a hostage to fortune. You just like, life has something on you now. And I think that's what keeps you up at night as a parent, is like, that something could happen and you don't have control of it.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  I remember when I became a parent, someone like, I had this nightmare, I forgot what it was. And someone said to me, oh, you only have two nightmares as a parent, you die or they die. And I'm like, really? And it's like, well, that does become it. And, and listen, I love, you know, Joan Didion, I love when I often have people watch the documentary on her. And it begins with like, you know, she's a robust elderly giggling lady that you're like, oh, what a fabulous life she's had in this person, that person. And then you hear about it and you go, wait a minute, she's been through that? Wait, that happened?

• 29:50Ryan Holiday?

  Standing. How did it not break this frail, tiny person? Yeah, it's unreal.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  It's interesting, the, uh, the, the history in things.

• 29:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  I wrote part of the original book on Truman Capote's table. And I'm like, is anything coming through? But I'm like, I don't want it to be, you know, gossipy or tacky. Like, you know, and, you know, it turns out it was just a table.

• 30:14Ryan Holiday?

  How did you find his table?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  I have a friend who was great friends with Joanne Carson, who was a good friend of his and had his desk.

• 30:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's an energy to things.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  There's an energy and yet there's also the stories.

• 30:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Like, what's going to happen if I write at this table?

• 30:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Nothing. It's just a table.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  It's a table.

• 30:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, her, her story is so, it's sobering. You know, she, she opens, she has this book, Blue Nights, and she opened, she's like at her daughter's wedding and she and her husband are walking out. And she says, you know, neither of us, no one could have understood watching this scene from the street, that within 18 months, everyone but the mother of the bride would be dead. And just how life can come at you very, very, very fast. It doesn't matter how successful you are, talented you are, how protected you are. That's to me what that Longfellow, he says, you know, it doesn't matter how well protected your, your, uh, your fireside is, there's an empty chair at

• 31:21Ryan Holiday?

  everyone's living room. Uh, none of us are exempt from it.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  And we so get that when we're in it. To me, one of the practices, can I get it when I'm not in it? When I'm in the grocery store and that person is struggling to find like the change in their wallet or purse, you know, and you're like, you knew we were at the checkout here. How did this surprise you?

• 31:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, this is not difficult.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  And yet, oh my gosh, did their spouse die a week ago?

• 31:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Did, are, are they like dealing with a new diagnosis? I mean, you really have no clue.

• 32:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  What anyone around us is going through in their struggles.

• 32:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  And to have that new awareness suddenly goes, can I give you a quarter?

• 32:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, right.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Do you?

• 32:13Ryan Holiday?

  Or just, or just leave them alone.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Be patient and like send them love and wish them well.

• 32:18Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  You know?

• 32:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a practice in meditations that I try to do. Marx really says he gets it from Epictetus, but he says, as you tuck your child in at night, say to yourself, they will not make it through till the morning. And I think he's doing what you're saying, which is not, he's not trying to say like, detach from this person. I think he's saying, why are you rushing through bedtime? You know what I mean? Like when my kid wants to get out to go-

• 32:45Speaker 02

  That's the hard thing to do. That's the hard thing to do. And I mean, I say it a little differently that for me, you know, because there's that thing about your life must be so depressing. And I think about, all right, let me just go there. What if it turns out today's my last day?

• 33:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  I don't know it. There's a car accident later, there's a plane crash. I don't know it, it's my last day. So if I take this in and go, wait, what if it's my last day? I only have two choices. I need to excuse myself right now because I have to go apologize to a lot of people. I gotta go make some amends. Or if I've been living currently, what? So if this is my last day, wait a minute, this is my last podcast. Well, if this is my last podcast, I mean, let's make this really good. I mean, I want to take in today. I want to like grab a little more from today than I normally would. And so what if I really try to make this day count even more?

• 33:45Speaker 02

  And then I don't die tonight? Great, I have a whole nother day and tomorrow it's going to be another great day.

• 33:53Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's what I think about. So it's, it's, you know, your child's not going to make it through till morning. And then when you're laying there and then they're like, I need water. And you're like, you don't need water. You're just making this up because you're trying to extend bedtime. You're like, oh yeah, I want to extend bedtime also. What do I care? Why am I trying to, what am I going to do? What am I going to do that's better than this? What am I going to do?

• 34:17Speaker 02

  If your child is like, these are precious moments. Let me like take it in.

• 34:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  And we're like- There's a destination, sleep.

• 34:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I'm like, I have an email to respond to or whatever. I it's what am I gonna do? I'm gonna go watch Netflix. You know, what I'm trying to do after this is laughably unimportant compared to this. But you can fool yourself for that if you allow your mind to do what we naturally with a much more comfortable thought, which is you have thousands more of this. So this one's not that important, but you don't know that.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  And you don't know that.

• 34:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  And you don't know that. And if you let that in, it actually doesn't depress you. It makes you live more.

• 35:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  It makes you, I mean, one of the things that was a crazy thing that I experienced, and I think sort of says it all, is I would do before the pandemic, you know, 30 cities and all that and be in like hotel meeting room after one. And I would be in a hotel meeting room and there'd be a few hundred people. And next door is the realtors and down the hall, the nurses around the corner is the, you know, Rotary Club. And the staff would say on more than one occasion, at the end of the day, what were you teaching?

• 35:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  And I go, why do you ask? And they go, because your group was laughing the most. And they'd be like, I'd say grief. What kind of grief? And I would go, that kind of grief. And what I think it's hard for the outsider to know is the people in that room, who had been through all kinds of tragedies or helped people with tragedies, absolutely had a longer, wider bandwidth for sorrow.

• 36:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  But they also had a longer, wider bandwidth for laughter, for joy.

• 36:12Ryan Holiday?

  You have to be able to laugh. In the ancient world, there were sort of two models. There was Democritus and Herakles. And the idea was Democritus cried over the absurdity and the tragedy of existence. And Herakles laughed at it. And which one are you going to be?

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:27Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca, some of Seneca's last words, so he gets the emperor, he runs afoul of Nero, and Nero sends this hit squad to kill him. And his friends are there, and his wife is there, and they're all crying, you know, he's gonna die. And he jokes, "Why are you crying over this?" He says, "When the whole of life requires tears." He's just making, he's like, "Why is this so sad? Life is sad." But he's making fun of the absurdity of it. And there is something, I think, about humor and laughter that only people who have experienced profound sadness and darkness truly understand.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  So many times, people go, "Wow, you really have a gift for, you know, death and grief." And I go, "I really have a gift for humor." Because the truth is, I mean, I don't think you could learn that much if I'm like, "Oh, let's keep you in the pain." I mean, humor's so important. And I'm not ever laughing at anyone's grief or their sorrows, but isn't life ridiculous? I mean, it becomes really funny, the absurd things that happen.

• 37:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, Lincoln had this profound sadness, and then also this sort of bawdy sense of humor. And I think you need the two to balance each other out. How do you think losing a child, what do you think that brings you to say to a parent? Like, how would that inform one's time with their children?

• 37:54Speaker 02

  It's hard, because I don't want to take away anyone's human experience. And I'm so glad I got to have, and still have with my older son, all those human experiences. And I think about it like, on one hand, I've done a lot of work with a cancer organization near me. And I remember, you know, one woman saying, after she got into remission, when she was about to die, she said, "You know, I get up every morning and I just take in the sunrise." I went, "That's amazing. I mean, I'm just ignoring it every single day."

• 38:31Speaker 02

  And then I remember seeing her like a year later and I go, how are you doing? And she's like, I'm doing great. My health's great. And I said, how are the sunrises? She goes, ah, you seen one, you seen them all. And I mean, I think we try to operate from the profoundness of all this, but we're just having this human experience.

• 38:51Ryan Holiday?

  There's still a day to day-ness also.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  There's a day to day-ness and you know, there's times someone will go, you know, my child didn't get into the college, da, da, da. And I'm like hearing him, I'm like, that's not a problem.

• 39:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not a, I mean, but, and sometimes I say it and sometimes I realize, well, that is their biggest problem.

• 39:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  You know, and maybe they're open to a different perspective and maybe they're not.

• 39:14Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's like, we all know what we're supposed to eat and then we get hungry or tired and we eat something different. So there, yeah, you're right. You have these profound insights and then you're still a human being who, you know, is prey to all the things that human beings do.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  And I remember in that same cancer organization, someone shared with me, we were talking about, what if you found out like, you know, it was your last week, your last day. And one person said, huh, I put another load of laundry in. And I love the humanness of that, that like, okay, I guess I'm just going to do the next thing that's in front of me, even if this turns out to be my last day.

• 39:48Ryan Holiday?

  Do you know who Montaigne is, the French essayist? He says, I hope death finds me planting cabbages.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 39:55Ryan Holiday?

  Just, he, he understood what Cicero said, that to philosophize is to learn how to die. But the idea was that you get this awareness, you get this understanding, you have these insights and then you just go about your regular life. He's like, I don't, you know, not, not dreading it, but also not like sort of overwrought and over-prepared for it. You learn all this stuff. And then in a sense, if you understand you could lose your kids at any moment, there's some unhealthy version where you just cling them so tight to you because you're afraid of always losing them, that you end up losing them. It's this idea of understanding it and then taking them to soccer practice and sending them off to school and just living a regular life with them.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Well, and I think a huge lesson is for me, fear doesn't stop death.

• 40:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Fear stops life. So you get in too much fear and it's everything. It's, I mean, You could lose your kids, you could lose your spouse. I mean, we could, that's like true to your job. I mean, everything. And so do we tighten up?

• 40:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Do we go into fear? Do we shut down? Or do we go, oh, my goodness, that's right. I was gonna lose everything anyway. I guess I'm just gonna like, relax into this while it's here and enjoy it.

• 41:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a balance to that, I think.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  And to go between, you know, that humanness and the reality of loss, that it's always around us. I always say, death is like, no further than six inches. I mean, some things around us that just could electrocute. I mean, something could happen in any given moment.

• 41:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  And, okay, I'm just gonna, well, live. And just like, I don't want this long, long wind down of my life. I mean, I'd like to be caught in the act. I'm just like

• 41:40Ryan Holiday?

  Planting cabbage.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Planting life, planting a cabbage and boom, who knew? Like, would he have planted a cabbage? Yeah, I probably would have. I would have done another load of laundry.

• 41:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. That's beautiful. You want to check out some books?

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 41:53Ryan Holiday?

  All right. And then I got something for you. Not that you need any more reminders, but we do these for Daily Stoic. I thought you might like that.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 42:00Ryan Holiday?

  It's a challenge coin, but it's, so the hourglass is time, the skull is death, and then the flower is life. That's the idea of memento mori, which the Stoic said we should be saying to ourselves constantly. And Seneca's point too, which I think is beautiful, he says, don't think of death as this thing that happens in the future, but as something that's happening right now. So not even in what you were saying, that it could happen right now, but that it is, because instead of seeing death as this singular final thing, we want to see the time that passes as being dead. And so, in fact, you're dying all the time.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Every day.

• 42:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Every day. And, you know, we have this moment, oh, nope, that's gone. It's gone.

• 42:45Ryan Holiday?

  It's dead.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  There's, there's a new one. And can we take that in? And it's so true. Every day is going to die.

• 42:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm never going to be This age again, I mean, sometimes I'll literally, when I'm trying, you know, there's so much in meditation, I'll come to the present moment. I mean, sometimes I'll do like a time travel pretending like, what if I was like in the future and I came back to this day?

• 43:13Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  I'd be like, wow, like, take in the room a little more and wow, like you're sitting with Ryan and like, you know, and the books on the wall, I'd be like, wasn't this day amazing? You know, how many of us go, if I could go back and look at that day again, well, take another look at this day here. This is an amazing day.

• 43:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  And maybe not, it could be the day that sucks in your life.

• 43:39Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  And can you also look at that as part of this experience?

• 43:42Ryan Holiday?

  And also to realize, yeah, there's nothing that keeps a parent up more than the idea of losing their children. But like, I've already lost my babies. I lost my toddler. You know, they're gone. I'll never get that one again because now they're older.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Grief is empty nest.

• 43:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  When they go to college, you're gonna lose them again.

• 44:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  I mean, and, you know, our spouses and our girlfriends and everyone else. And it's, it's okay. And it's all gonna happen someday, but we have this and we have now in this moment. And that's what's amazing about it.

• 44:31Ryan Holiday?

  For the last episode, we're gonna go in a very different direction. We're gonna go in the heavy metal direction. I'm friends with Randy Blythe, the lead singer of the metal band Lamb of God, also has two amazing books. I actually just saw him on book tour here in Austin and he gave like a riveting like two hour conversation about, you know, his experiences, which by the way, include being wrongly jailed in a Czech prison. So fascinating life, fascinating guy. I think you're gonna really like this. And as I said, he has two wonderful books, Just Beyond the Light and Dark Days. And so we talked quite a bit about Memento Mori because they have a famous song about that, which if my son hadn't stolen my phone, I would be telling you how many streams it has on Spotify because I think it's one of their most streamed and it's a very great

• 45:16Ryan Holiday?

  song. Anyways, you can check out the show notes for full episode links if you want to listen to the whole conversation with those people. If you want a Memento Mori reminder, I have one sitting here. On my desk, the Memento Mori coin we make for Daily Stoic, and you can grab one yourself at store.dailystoic.com.

• 45:37Ryan Holiday?

  We were talking about, you know, it's not as bad as being in a Czech prison. But I think that the exercise of Memento Mori puts all that stuff in perspective, too. Right? You're like, hey, this is my only day. How am I gonna spend it?

• 45:50Speaker 03

  This is it.

• 45:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  You know, remember, you too shall die.

• 45:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you gave me this thing.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:59Ryan Holiday?

  Have you seen those? I like to look at cemeteries. I like the cemetery where it shows what the person looks like. Instead of being, you know, them as an angel or whatever, it shows like a skeleton. The expression is, what you are, I once was.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:17Ryan Holiday?

  What I am now, you will be.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes, yes, yes.

• 46:20Ryan Holiday?

  And so they're called skeleton tombs or something. I forget, there's a Latin expression, but the idea is like, instead of the grave representing this peaceful, serene, gentle thing.

• 46:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 46:30Ryan Holiday?

  They want to show the, the sort of, the decomposition.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:35Ryan Holiday?

  And the tragedy and the decay of it. Because that's in you also.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:41Ryan Holiday?

  You are on your way to becoming that very thing.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Most certainly. It's like Alexander the Great and his mule driver.

• 46:52Ryan Holiday?

  It's one of my favorite lines in meditation.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:55Ryan Holiday?

  Both died and both buried in the same ground. They're both fucking worm food, is what he's saying.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, 100%. Have you been to the catacombs in Paris?

• 47:04Ryan Holiday?

  Not in Paris, but I've been to a bunch of different catacombs.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  We went last time and cut a lot, a lot of photos and they had lots of great sayings up there on the, on the walls in different parts.

• 47:15Ryan Holiday?

  There was a church in Dublin that has a crypt underneath it. And you walk in and they have, it's because of the temperature and the depth, it perfectly preserved these bodies that were buried in there. And they took, you know, they slid the stone off the coffin. And you can see they're basically these natural mummies. And I was telling my kids this because they didn't believe it's true, but that you used to be able to go in, I went 12 years ago, and they let you touch the mummy.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 47:45Ryan Holiday?

  Like its hand is there and you can rub its finger.

• 47:48Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 47:48Ryan Holiday?

  And so you're touching what you will one day be.

• 47:51Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 47:52Ryan Holiday?

  And.

• 47:54Ryan Holiday?

  The jolting feeling that you get there and you're like, this person died in the fucking crusades.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 48:01Ryan Holiday?

  Is not just this guy died in the crusades, but this guy was so abnormally tall that to fit him in this casket, they broke his legs to fold it under him.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  Right. One size, one size casket.

• 48:14Ryan Holiday?

  You're done, man. You don't need to be comfortable in there.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah, absolutely.

• 48:19Ryan Holiday?

  It reminds, there's a, there's another quote, uh, came from a Roman poet, similar to that line from Marcus Aurelius. He says, um, "In life, the world could not contain Alexander's ambition, but in death, a coffin was sufficient."

• 48:34Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:35Ryan Holiday?

  And so you could want to be the biggest musician in the world, the biggest whatever in the world. You could be fucking physically imposing and intimidating.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:44Ryan Holiday?

  And then your ashes are like a fucking coffee cup.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, I write about that in the first, the first chapter two, kind of like how in considering our, our own deaths, you know, um, for some people, I believe, or this may be a rude shock to you, but you are no better than the piece of roadkill that you pass by, you know, you're no, in death, you're no better than the, the person you made fun of in high school. You know, all this other stuff, you, we're all going to be equally dead. Conversely, if you're suffering from an inferiority complex, you know, take comfort in the fact that you will succeed effortlessly at being as perfectly dead as the greatest men and women of history, you know?

• 49:31Ryan Holiday?

  Or the, the nice way to, the, the more inspirational way to put that is you are as equally alive as the greatest.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:39Ryan Holiday?

  People on the planet.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:40Ryan Holiday?

  You know, you have, you have as much life in you as the most powerful, richest person in the world.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:47Ryan Holiday?

  Pleasure feels the same. The air tastes the same. It is what it is. This is all there is.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is it, you know? Enjoy it while it's here. I think, um, yeah, no, no one is, um, not breathes any better than anyone else.

• 50:07Ryan Holiday?

  Unless you have asthma, I guess, maybe.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  Well, we're talking permanent not breathing.

• 50:12Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, right. It's the great equalizer in the end. It's the one prophecy that never fails.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:18Ryan Holiday?

  And, uh, once it happens, it's done.

• 50:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. And it's going to happen to everyone.

• 50:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  Did you see that documentary on Netflix about the dude who's trying to run?

• 50:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, like it's, it's interesting, some of it, like theoretically, what they're trying to do, but.

• 50:37Ryan Holiday?

  You know what I think when I think about guys like that, guys that want, think they want to live forever? They spend all this money on this longevity shit.

• 50:46Ryan Holiday?

  One of the emperors, one of the Roman emperors is, uh, walking by there. They're executing some, you know, heinous criminal who's wasted his life being awful. And, uh, the criminal sees him and he says, you know, like, uh, you know, please, please spare me or whatever. And, and the emperor says, I didn't know you were even alive. Like he was saying, so you're really alive, are you? That's what he says. Like the, the point is your existence, the thing you're begging to be given a second chance at is not that great. And I, I, I think about, there's something fundamentally funny to me about the, that guy's life doesn't seem that amazing.

• 51:28Ryan Holiday?

  He's not, he's not making an argument why his life is so great.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 51:32Ryan Holiday?

  That he should live forever, or he should get another 50 years because he's going to put it to such great use. What he's saying is, I'm going to make my health really good.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:42Ryan Holiday?

  That's his argument. His argument is my health should entitle me to more years. Not the quality of my life.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 51:49Ryan Holiday?

  Is worth preserving. Like there's never this much, and look, life is life. And, and I feel like everyone should, is entitled, I think healthcare should be a human right. I think anytime we can improve the longevity of, of the population as a whole, that is a wonderful, uh, blow to strike for justice. So that's not what I mean. But I think it's funny that the people that are most obsessed with living the longest, strike me as pretty miserable people.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:17Ryan Holiday?

  And pretty self-absorbed people.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 52:19Ryan Holiday?

  That, uh, I'm not so, uh, intrigued by what they're going to do with this extra time. Cause I know the answer is basically just more self-indulgent nonsense.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Well, if you, I mean, even, you know, I'm, I love vampires.

• 52:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Huge vampire fan and will take my hand at writing a vampire novel one day.

• 52:39Ryan Holiday?

  Go for it.

• 52:40Speaker 03

  But the depictions of vampires, their immortality.

• 52:45Ryan Holiday?

  Is a curse.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  It's never good.

• 52:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, it's a curse. Yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  Never good.

• 52:49Ryan Holiday?

  It's a curse. Yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  And I, God, I can't ima-- I would, I would not want to live another 100 years. No way.

• 52:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 03

  No way.

• 52:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like he sucks his blood from his son or whatever, the, the, the guy in the documentary.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:03Ryan Holiday?

  And it's like, I think it's supposed to go the other direction.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:06Ryan Holiday?

  Like, do you know what I mean? Like, he's not like, I've, I've decided to put all this time and energy into helping my son live forever because I just love him so much. I'd be devastated if anything happened to him.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:17Ryan Holiday?

  He's like, how can I suck the youthful energy out of my boy?

• 53:23Ryan Holiday?

  It's, being a parent is supposed to make you shift your priorities in the precisely the opposite direction, bud.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, he, he donated some to his father, some of his plasma, but then it's kind of like you're taking your son's life. That's, you, that's what the, hopefully the presupposition that your son will one day have kids is he's supposed to just continually drain them, you know, you're breeding, uh, youth fountains or whatever.

• 53:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a Zen saying, uh, grandfather dies, father dies, son dies. This is a happy story.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Because that's how it's supposed to go.

• 53:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I, this starts to get, uh, pretty metaphysical very quickly, but I think the whole point is that there's no point if we don't die. It's supposed to be, that's what creates the urgency and the clarity.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:12Ryan Holiday?

  And the, uh, an infinite game means you get an infinite number of tries.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:19Ryan Holiday?

  And that's not what life is. Life is a finite game.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, 100%.

• 54:29Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.