We Are Not Alone | Accepting What Is

Ghosts are, of course, a silly thing to believe in (Athenodorus’ ghost story notwithstanding). Yet the Stoics would not have scoffed at Eleanor Roosevelt’s feeling of not being alone in the Lincoln bedroom. As the New York Times would write many years ago in an editorial about her claim, “The White House is built of memories…It will remain a haunted house as long as it stands, but only in the benign sense that unseen presences may still be watching the destiny of the Republic…What American, passing by that great pillared residence, in time of stress, could fail to feel reassured to sense the shadowy figure of Lincoln, just as Mrs. Roosevelt describes him, gazing thoughtfully from a window?”✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://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, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:39Ryan Holiday?

  We are not alone. Ghosts are, of course, a silly thing to believe in. Athenodorus's ghost story, nonwithstanding. Yet the Stoics would not have scoffed at Eleanor Roosevelt's feeling of not being alone in the Lincoln bedroom. As the New York Times would write many years ago in an editorial about her claim, "The White House is built of memories. It will remain a haunted house as long as it stands, but only in the benign sense that the unseen presences may still be watching the destiny of the republic." What American passing by that great pillared residence in times of stress could fail to feel reassured

• 1:20Ryan Holiday?

  to sense the shadowy figure of Lincoln, just as Miss Roosevelt describes, gazing thoughtfully from a window? And so the same feeling goes walking past the old Sto apochele, or the Colosseum, or picking up a yellowed and crumbling edition of Meditations. You feel not just the presence of the Stoics themselves, but all the people who have followed since. The parade of people, as Marcus Aurelius himself wrote, "doing just what human beings have always done, people just like you, people with the same vices and virtues as you, teaching you, advising you, cautioning you with their example." Whether spirits exist or not, none

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  of us are alone. Lincoln gazes at us thoughtfully. Seneca keeps a light on for us at night, beckoning us to sit down and reflect on our day. Cato's Or lack thereof, as we've discussed, stands as an example to follow. The private thoughts and admonitions of Marcus are there to reassure us, guiding us towards our destiny. This is not a scary thing. It's not a haunting thing. It is, as we talked about over at Daily Dad, which I hope you can sign up for or just listen to the podcast, the Daily Dad Podcast. This is the role that ancestors are supposed to play. They inspire us, they protect us, they reassure us, they give us company. We are not alone and never will be. Remember that.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  Act accordingly.

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  Accepting What Is. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living, by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon. Then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer is a mantra for many.

• 3:35Ryan Holiday?

  "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," it reads, "courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." The Stoics wanted to push past simply accepting what is. They wanted us to be grateful and happy with what is. Epictetus taught that we get a well-flowing life when we wish for what is going to happen, not for what we want to happen. And Marcus Aurelius adds that we should meet anything that comes our way with gratitude, not, "I wish this was different and I'll tolerate it, but I'm glad it happened this way. It's for the best." So let us try that on for size this week.

• 4:17Ryan Holiday?

  And we have two quotes from Epictetus and one from Marcus Aurelius. "Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will, and then your life will flow well." That's Epictetus's Incoridion 8, and then from the Discourses 1:12, he says, "To be truly educated means this: learning to wish that each thing happens exactly as it does." Marcus Aurelius' Meditation 9:6, "All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment, action for the common good in the present moment, and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way."

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  One thing I wanted to point out, because I was fascinated to learn this, is the Serenity Prayer, one, it sounds like some sort of real hymn or prayer that must go back thousands of years. Honestly, it sounds like something that could come from the Stoics, and then obviously, a lot of people associate it with recovery movement, which it has become a big part of. But it really dates to like the 30s and 40s. They think that he composed the prayer somewhere around the time of 1932, 1933, which for some context is in the midst of the Great Depression. But again, one of the benefits of wisdom is that it is both

• 5:44Ryan Holiday?

  timely and timeless at the same time. So this idea of the prayer, "Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know one from another." Also, I think the difference between that, as he first writes it, and then what it sort of commonly gets rendered out, is also a sign of, as Twain says, the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Like, just the perfect wording of it, the perfect encapsulation of the wisdom, it feels, as soon as you see it, even though, you know, it's as old as some people's grandparents who are listening to this, or perhaps some people who are listening to this themselves, they may be well older.

• 6:28Ryan Holiday?

  Then that short little prayer, but it feels as current and fresh and also as ageless and timeless. It's just about anything. But anyways, let's not nerd out too much on, on, on the, the history of the prayer. I, what I thought I would focus on today, because we've been talking about acceptance quite a lot here on the podcast. I tend to disagree a little bit with Epictetus. I find that Epictetus's life was so tragic and painful. I mean, he's, he's born, his, his name literally means like enslaved. We know almost nothing about his family. We know nothing about his existence, except that he's born a slave. He has a cruel master who tortures

• 7:10Ryan Holiday?

  him. He walks for a limp the rest of his life. And then after 30 years of slavery and, you know, eventually getting his freedom, Epictetus is exiled by a cruel emperor. So it is a hard life, but I find it striking that nowhere in Epictetus's writings, does he really question whether any of it was right or fair? Um, whether anything could be done about it? Now you might say this is him reaching this sort of sage-like level of wisdom. And I think there's truth to that. I mean, who am I to question, obviously such a great and brave and, you know, enduring spirit. But I guess, obviously, we live in a world now where people have more agency. And,

• 7:53Ryan Holiday?

  and why do we have that agency? Because people were willing to fight for it and change. So obviously, the Stoics are mostly right, that so much of what happens in this world is outside of our control. We should accept it, resenting it, crying over it, whining about it, simply wishing it was otherwise, does not do anything. And then a lot of the things that there, I think this is referred to, are things that you just, look, you were born five foot three instead of six foot three, that's just a reality. You're gonna have to accept it, right? People in your family go bald, you're gonna have to accept it, right? Your spouse turned out to be a jerk. They ran away with all your money, left you, broke your heart. It happened, right? That is true, but I just don't want Epictetus to be misinterpreted as some sort

• 8:38Ryan Holiday?

  Sort of rationalization or acceptance of profound injustices, including the injustices that Epictetus seemed relatively okay accepting, right? As they say, progress depends on the unreasonable man. I talk about this a little bit in the Courage book. We have to be accepting. We have to face unflinchingly the reality of our situation. But even as I read this paragraph that I have written, I would push back on it a little bit. And I do think it's important that we focus on what we're going to do about the situations that we find ourselves in. And I feel like Epictetus could have done that a bit more himself. Still, obviously a great man, better man than I. Certainly, I could not have endured what he endured. But it's just a thought today.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  And I want you to be okay pushing back and questioning things from the Stoics as well. They weren't perfect. They were products of their time. They were products of their own experiences. And we can challenge and debate and argue with them as long as we think we're getting them closer to what they actually mean, what the wisdom of the Stoics actually mean. And that's today's message.

• 9:51Ryan Holiday?

  You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa, the Stoa Pochyle, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the Stoa. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community. You could talk about like today's episode. You could talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using Stoicism to be better in their actual, real lives. You get more Daily Stoic Meditations over the weekend just for the Daily Stoic Life members, quarterly Q and As with me, cloth-bound edition of our Best of Meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff, including discounts.

• 10:35Ryan Holiday?

  And this is the best part, all our Daily Stoic courses and challenges, totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You Challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial, totally for free. Check it out at DailyStoicLife.com.