It’s Tragic But Helpful

The Stoics were not so insensitive as to believe that it was good that someone died. That’s not what they meant by “opportunity”—what they meant was that there was always something to learn, always some virtue we could practice in light of a tragedy that would make us better, teach us something, help us see something.🪙 Designed with the intention of carrying them in your pocket, our Memento Mori Medallion is a literal and inescapable reminder that “you could leave life right now.”Check it out at https://store.dailystoic.com/🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour✉️ 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 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 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, dailystoic.com.

• 0:30Ryan Holiday?

  It's tragic, but helpful. It's the thing we all dread. It almost always comes as a surprise. It's almost always an unwelcome surprise. Comfort fails us, and we fail to comfort others. When we lose someone, when we hear that someone has died, it's a tragedy. It's the worst part about being alive, honestly. It's one of the few areas where it seems like the Stoic idea that the obstacle is the way fails. How could you possibly say amor fati to someone who buried a parent, or a child, or to an organization that lost a leader, a country that lost an artist, or a president? You can't. And the Stoics were not so insensitive as to believe that it was good that someone died. That's not what they meant by opportunity. They meant was that there was always something to learn,

• 1:14Ryan Holiday?

  always some virtue we could practice in light of a tragedy that would make us better, teach us something, help us see something. One of Lincoln's most beautiful speeches is a eulogy that he delivered for Zachary Taylor in Chicago in 1850. Taylor, who had died unexpectedly, a little more than a year into office, left behind him many unfulfilled hopes. He had tried to unify the country and prevent the coming Civil War. He left behind a large family and many friends. "What good was there in the premature death of a great general and potentially a great president? The death of the late president may not be without its use," Lincoln explained, "in reminding us that we too must die. Death, abstractly considered, is the same with the high as with the low,

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  but practically, we are not so much aroused to the contemplation of our own mortal natures. By the fall of many undistinguished as that of one great and well-known name, by the latter we are forced to muse and ponder." Sadly. Seneca said that when we hear our neighbor has died, we should engage in a similar pondering, not how sad for them, but how easily that could be me and how inevitably it one day will be you.