Your Duty Remains The Same

As a Stoic, nothing in an election changes what is asked or obligated of you. You are still expected to be a person of virtue. 📕 Pick up a copy of Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday | 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?

  Your duty remains the same. It was always unlikely that this would be settled quickly. It was inevitable that it would not go someone's way. So today, as the dust settles on the US election, you may find yourself glued to the TV screen or refreshing your social media feed. You are almost certainly worried. Even if you feel some relief, the truth is that none of us know how this will shake out. What are we to do? What does it all mean? What if it's about to get real, real bad? You are not wrong to think about this, but you are mistaken if you think that what has happened, or what will happen, or who was elected, changes anything. This is not to argue that elections don't matter.

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  They absolutely do, as we have said many times. It's just that, as a Stoic, nothing in an election changes what is asked or obligated of you. It doesn't matter if a tyrant or a philosopher king comes to power. It doesn't matter if you yourself are the person who comes to power. You are still expected to be good. You are still expected to be a person of virtue. "Whatever anyone does or says, for my part, I am bound to the good," Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations. "In the same way an emerald, or gold, or purple might always proclaim, 'Whatever anyone does or says, I must be what I am and show my true colors.'" Whatever happens in life, in world events, in politics, our job is our job, our duty is our duty. "How can anything stop you?"

• 1:58Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus asks elsewhere in Meditations. How does this stop you from acting with courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom?

• 2:06Ryan Holiday?

  In fact, it may well be that these election results present you with an incredible and urgent opportunity to act with those virtues. So it went for Helvidius, a senator who we profile in Lives of the Stoics, when the Emperor Vespasian tried to stop him from criticizing him. "It is in your power not to allow me to be a member of the Senate," Helvidius replied, "but so long as I am, I must go in, and I must say what I think right. But if you do," Vespasian replied, "I shall put you to death." "You will do your part," Helvidius said with immense courage, "and I will do mine." Our job today is the same as it's always been, and this is true tomorrow, too.

• 2:49Ryan Holiday?

  Our job is to be good, to be wise, to stand up for what's right, to resist what is wrong and evil. Nothing changes that, nothing exempts us from that, nothing prevents us from doing that. The consequences and the costs and the stakes can change, and these election results may well have done that, but the obligation remains, the duty remains. So do it, like a Stoic. Now, I am recording this several days before the election. I don't know how it's going to shake out. I have a way I would like it to shake out, which is why I wrote this and why I've been thinking about this. We don't know, but I'm trying to remind myself it doesn't change anything, positive or negative.

• 3:31Ryan Holiday?

  If it goes the way I hoped, doesn't go the way I hoped, I still have to be me, I still have to do what I have to do as a parent, as a writer, a person with a platform, as a citizen, as a human being. I still have to do what I have to do, and I don't mean that in the mundane sense, that I gotta get my kids to school, I gotta eat, I gotta pay my taxes, or whatever. My obligations as a human being, as a person who tries to live with virtue, to be a good person, that not only remains the same, but in fact, it becomes more important than ever. And that goes for all of you. Be safe, be well, be smart, don't get sucked into craziness. I'll talk to y'all soon.