Life Is Too Short To Rush Through

“You look around and you see people rushing everywhere. Rushing through traffic. Rushing to get their kids down to bed. No time to talk. No time to sit. There is too much to do. There is somewhere to go, and the faster the better.”Ryan explains why this moment is so important, on 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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom, designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday 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.

• 0:27Ryan Holiday?

  "Life is too short to rush through." You look around and you see people rushing everywhere, rushing through traffic, rushing to get their kids down to bed. No time to talk, no time to sit. There's too much to do. There is somewhere to go, and the faster the better. This was as true in the ancient world as it is today. In Rome, people were rushing to get their mail, rushing to win the next public office, rushing to the next round of the games in the Colosseum, rushing to their next big accomplishment. Or at least, that's what they thought. Seneca makes the point, however, that what we are really rushing towards with all deliberate speed is death. That's what he means when he says that we get death wrong. Death is not some distant thing in the future, some looming end date, to which the proper response is

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  to try to squeeze in as much stuff as possible before it comes. Instead, he said, "Death is something happening to you right now. It's happening as you read this email. It's happening as you listen to this podcast. I hope it's been worth it. It's happening as you struggle to put your daughter's shoes on so you can drop her off at school. And then it's happening still more as you sit down to that coffee meeting you rush to, even though you know you didn't want to have it in the first place. The time that passes, Seneca reminds us, is death. It belongs to death. You'll never get to live what has been lived back. So why are you rushing? Why are you thinking about the future at the expense of the present? Life is too short to be lived in fast forward. Slow down, breathe it in, enjoy it."

• 1:58Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. And if you didn't know, I also have another podcast and daily email. Every day I write something at dailiedad.com, which gets delivered to thousands of people all over the world. I record the meditations, just like this one, on the podcast for free. So if you're a parent, if you know a parent, if you're an expecting parent, I think you'd really like it. It's called Daily Dad, but it has nothing to do with gender. I'm a dad, that's why it's called that. We'd love to have you over at dailiedad.com. And of course, subscribe to the Daily Dad Podcast.