The Most Human Thing You Can Do | Ask Daily Stoic

Years before he became president, Harry Truman owned a haberdashery that doubled as a local hang-out. A kid named Albert Ridge would often head there after his shift at the neighborhood grocery store. For the rest of his life, Ridge would tell the story of the time Truman gave him a list of ten books to read. It included books like Plutarch's Lives, Caesar's Commentaries, and Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks. Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street. Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy we're all trying to follow.

• 0:50Ryan Holiday?

  The most human thing you can do.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  For too long, we've been led to believe that to show emotion is to show weakness. Suck it up, we're told. Stop being a crybaby. You're stronger than that. No one wants to hear it. In his wonderful book, A Better Man, A Mostly Serious Letter to My Son, Michael Ian Black points out how persuasive this regressive admonition is in our culture, even infusing itself into modern tellings of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. To hear it be told by many present day preachers, Jesus picks up the cross, carries it alone, and while being tortured, continues on with no sign of emotion, simply absorbing the pain and suffering of the world. But as Black points out, on the cross, Jesus finally succumbs

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  to his pain, calling out to his Father, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" In that raw, agonizing moment, he fully sheds his divinity and becomes one of us. "Giving voice to suffering does not make you less of a man," Black writes. "It makes you more of a human."

• 1:59Ryan Holiday?

  It's interesting that in one of the most famous stories about Marcus Aurelius, he shows himself to be one of us. When his tutor died, Marcus cried uncontrollably. Antoninus, Marcus's stepfather, understood this completely. Neither philosophy nor empire, Antoninus famously said, takes away natural feeling. The same goes for you. No matter how much philosophy you've read, no matter how much older you've gotten, or how important your position is, or how many people are counting on you, it's okay to show emotion. It's okay to break down sometimes. It's okay to call out. It's okay to cry. It's more than okay. It's the most human thing you can do.

• 2:47Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. You send me, Ryan Holiday, your questions about Stoicism, about the Stoics, about life. I try to answer. We put it on YouTube. We put it on the podcast. Thanks for listening. And if you want to send us some questions, you can send those in at [email protected]. Our first question, how should I react or embrace a continuous problem? For example, my roommate does not pick up around the house. This is not an issue that I could simply let go or embrace. I'm forcibly put into a situation I don't want to be in. Another example is that I'm working at a job I don't want to work at. This is a situation I don't want to be in. Quitting is a gamble on my future, even granting that it was my own ignorance that brought the situation. A

• 3:30Ryan Holiday?

  bad job is not something you intend. But what do I do? So I think this is a good question. So first off, the Stoics would go like, let's say, let's say there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. So you have to endure it. Is it really so bad that you have to endure some, some mess around the house? You know, Marcus Aurelius goes like, endure it. And it can't go on forever because you'll die or they'll die. And so there's kind of a glibness to that. But I think it's true. It's just a reminder that like, look, this is not cancer, right? And but sometimes because we don't have other problems going on, we've or because we do have other problems going on, we fixate on these minor things,

• 4:14Ryan Holiday?

  or we fixate on what other people are doing. So the second thing the Stoics would talk about would be that, right? What can you do around your house that might influence the situation, right? Instead of just...

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  Hoping your roommate will change their behavior instead of yelling at them to change their behavior, instead of focusing on them, which you don't control, what do you control? Right? And maybe it's having a conversation, maybe it's setting up systems, maybe it's cleaning up your stuff. Maybe if you really hate it, it's just cleaning up their stuff, right? There's lots of options inside that. And then the third, the third thing the Stoics would go is like, okay, if you really don't like this, if you're really unhappy with it, what are you willing to trade to get out of it? Right? Can you move? Can you sublet out your unit? Like, just get out of it, right? Like, if it's really making you as miserable as you feel like it's making you, and the Stoics would, would say it's probably not,

• 5:13Ryan Holiday?

  but let's say it is, can you get out of it? I think about this with jobs. Like, there's been plenty of jobs that I've had that I haven't liked. So I'd say, okay, I'm gonna leave this job. I'm gonna do something else. In the meantime, though, let's say I can't leave until I save up enough money to do X, or there's this project I have to finish. I go, now that I know that there is an end date to this thing that's causing me discomfort or misery, what can I learn in the interim period? What can I do in the interim period? And I think this is a similar thing with your roommate. So you've got three months left on your lease. Okay, can you practice putting up with this for three months? Can you practice being, you know, more direct if you're a non-confrontational person with your roommate for the next three months? Can you practice being more organized and

• 5:57Ryan Holiday?

  helpful? And what like, what is, what is the opportunity? If you cannot change this situation, if you simply have to put up with it, what can you do in that period? What can you do with that fact that makes you better, that presents you an opportunity to improve? But all of this, I think, is under the larger umbrella, which is, they sound like some first world problems. So not to belittle it, but they sound like some first world problems. So I'd, I'd keep that in perspective as well. All right. The next question, would you recommend a work of any modern philosopher who was Stoic or influenced by Stoicism? I absolutely can. It's a great question. And I happen to have this book in front of

• 6:40Ryan Holiday?

  me because I was talking about it in an earlier question. This is Pierre Hadeau. He's a French philosopher. He wrote a fantastic book about Marcus Aurelius called The Inner Citadel, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. There's another book.

• 6:54Ryan Holiday?

  Philosophy as a Way of Life by Pierre Hidot. Also, very good, influenced, sort of about Stoicism, but not just about Stoicism. Let me see what else I've got here.

• 7:07Ryan Holiday?

  I don't have my copy, but Donald Robertson's book, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, came out recently, very good. He's a great thinker about Stoicism, very thoughtful guy. Alain de Batton has written some interesting things, sort of inspired by, about Stoicism. We did an interview with Darren Brown. He's a, he's a British, he's a British magician, but he's also written books on happiness that are largely influenced by Stoicism. I think he's really great. So we've got a bunch of resources on the Daily Stoic website, but I would say two other books, if I was thinking philosophy, that's influenced by Stoicism.

• 7:51Ryan Holiday?

  Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, very good, sort of driven by Stoicism in a lot of ways. Trying to think one other one that I do, that I think's really good. You know, I think Mark Manson, if I was going to really pop, really sort of accessible, recent, modern, I think Mark Manson's stuff, which is a little more Zen Buddhist than Stoic, but I'd sort of consider him a fellow traveler. He's a great guy. Check out his books as well. All right. Next question. I have a small problem reconciling my atheism with my Stoicism.

• 8:34Ryan Holiday?

  Can one be both? I'm sure the answer is yes, but I would love to hear it discussed.

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, look, I don't think you have to reconcile your atheism with Stoicism. To me, Stoicism is a philosophy and religion is separate. So there's this great quote from Flaubert, where he talks about how there was this moment in history between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, he says, where man stood alone in the universe. So Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism, or sorry, Marcus Aurelius and Christianity do not go well together, actually. So it's the opposite of the reconciliation, and the Christians probably have more work to do. But, but Risticus, who introduces Marcus Aurelius to Stoicism, persecutes and executes Justin Martyr.

• 9:22Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca's brother is actually adjudicates a case involving St. Paul. So for many, many years of Stoicism's sort of heyday in Rome, it was outwardly hostile to Christianity. And I'm writing about this a little bit in my next book, so you can stay tuned for that. But Stoicism definitely believed that there was a God, or gods, but more in the Roman sense. So gods were these sort of rituals, these sort of official deities. It wasn't the same as the sort of Christianity, sort of modern religious sense that we have now.

• 10:06Ryan Holiday?

  There's a recent translation of an essay by Cicero that sort of focuses on Stoicism and spirituality. It's by Princeton University Press. I think it's called "How to Think About God," or "What to Think About God," or something like that. But I might check that out. It's sort of an interesting dialogue. But I think there is plenty in Stoicism that makes it compatible with religion. The idea of the logos or fate, you know, the word and the way, both that's logos in Latin, that's there. But at the same time, like, the Stoics are talking about, I think, a much more logical reason for doing the things that they do.

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  So like, Jesus and Seneca are born in the same year. Whereas Jesus is saying, like, "Follow me, you know, like, obey the law of God, or you'll go to hell," or, you know, like, "You won't have an afterlife." I think what Seneca is saying at the very same time, in the very same empire, is like, "Don't be a bad person, because you'll be unhappy, right? It will make you miserable." So I think, really, the Stoics are saying a lot of similar things to the Christians, but they're saying them for very different reasons. And there were plenty of Christians, actually, the interesting thing about Justin Martyr is that he studied a Stoic philosopher before he converted, under a Stoic philosopher, before he converted to Christianity. So.

• 11:35Ryan Holiday?

  I don't think they're as unreconcilable as you think, but they're also quite easily reconciled. Christianity and Stoicism, or atheism and Stoicism, I think primarily what the Stoics would tell you to do is just focus on what is making you a better, more virtuous person, not what solves some metaphysical, you know, explanation of the universe. Focus on your self-improvement, not these big abstract questions. Anyways, that's what I try to do. So, thanks, guys. It's been another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. Keep asking questions. You can send them to [email protected], and I'll keep answering them. Thanks.

• 12:18Ryan 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.