Is This Teaching You To Appreciate Things?

"How suddenly life can take from us all the things we took for granted. Whether it’s a global pandemic that locks you in your house or one of the capricious exiles that the Stoics experienced, much can be taken from us. Our ability to see our friends. Our financial security. Even our freedom of movement. That sucks. But it sucks even more if you don’t learn from it, if you don’t take this moment as instructive and eye opening."Ryan teaches one of the lessons that the pandemic has to offer us 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/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: 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.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Is this teaching you to appreciate things? How suddenly life can take from us all the things we took for granted. Whether it's a global pandemic that locks you in your house, or one of the capricious exiles that the Stoics experienced, much can be taken from us. Our ability to see our friends, our financial security, even our freedom of movement. That sucks. But it sucks even more if you don't learn from it, if you don't take this moment as instructive and eye-opening. When Musonius Rufus was exiled, instead of bemoaning it, he reminded himself that even when he was free and in Rome, he didn't see all his friends often enough. He didn't go outside often enough, or see the city enough.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  So we can imagine that when he finally returned to Rome, he was a little more present and procrastinated less, too. When Marcus Aurelius was stuck on the muddy frontiers, bogged down in endless war, it was then that he wrote his most beautiful and philosophical passages in Meditations. It was there that he wrote some of those haunting and poignant observations about nature, about stocks of grain and majestic lions, even though those things were hundreds of miles away. Some sense of normalcy will eventually return. The question for us is whether, when that happens, are we going to go right back to our self-obsessed, ungrateful, closed-off lives? Or are we going to start appreciating the little things? Are we going

• 1:57Speaker 01

  to start noticing? Are we going to stop putting things off or taking things for granted? A walk around the block, a dinner with a friend, leisurely browsing a bookstore, watching live music, pushing your kid on a swing in a park? This quarantine has shown us how special these ordinary things are. Life is short. It can be interrupted. In an instant, everything can disappear. So enjoy them while you can. Appreciate them while you can.

• 2:26Ryan Holiday?

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