We Can’t Let This Go On | The Portable Retreat

“No man is an island. We’ve taken the line from the John Donne poem and turned it into a common expression, but we’ve missed the point. It’s not simply that we can’t exist by ourselves. It’s much deeper than that.”Ryan explains why we must recognize that we are all a part of the whole, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is also brought to you by Blinkist, the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too. Today’s episode is brought to you by Munk Pack, Keto Granola Bars that contain just a single gram of sugar and 2 to 3 net carbs—and they’re only 140 calories. They’re not just keto-friendy: they’re also gluten and grain free, plant based, and non GMO, with no soy, trans fats, sugar alcohols, or artificial coloring. It’s backed with a 100% satisfaction guarantee — so if you don’t like it for any reason, they'll exchange the product or refund your money, whichever you prefer. Get 20% off your first purchase of ANY Munk Pack product by visiting munkpack.com and entering our code STOIC at checkout.***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/dailystoicSee 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. 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. We can't let this go on. "No man is an island." We've taken that line from the John Donne poem and turned it into common expression, but we've missed the point. It's not simply that we can't exist by ourselves. It's much deeper than that.

• 0:48Ryan Holiday?

  What this poet was trying to express is something akin to the collectivism of the Stoics, the idea that we are all in this together, that we were put here for each other, that our fates are bound up inseparably from each other. To be indifferent to the sufferings of others, to harden your heart, is to harm yourself as well as others. "Every man is a piece of the continent," the poem reads, "a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a man or of thy friends or of thy own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  2020 has been a year of adversity and difficulty and death, from George Floyd to the lives cut short by COVID-19, to the dreams deferred, damaged, and destroyed by the economic devastation that followed. It is so easy to turn inward in moments like this, to focus on all the things you have to deal with. It's easy to be callous. It's easy to look for excuses and rationalizations. The death toll is actually very low. Most of the victims were already old. We cannot accept that, of ourselves or of anyone. We can't let this go on. It was preventable, and even today, it remains stoppable. If only we would just wear our shields, if we could just understand that magical thinking doesn't exempt

• 2:16Ryan Holiday?

  your wedding, your Thanksgiving travel plans, from spreading the virus. ¿Por qué crees que Marcus Aurelius lloró por las víctimas de la plaga, aunque la mayoría de ellos habrían sido extraños faceless de una población de 50 millones? Porque creía que Roma no era una colección de individuos, de islas, sino de un continente, una parte de la maina. Nos debemos de cada uno a nuestro propio hacerse un acto. Debemos estar involucrados en la humanidad. No podemos rendirnos a la selfishidad o la estupidez. No podemos ser indiferentes, ni sobre esto. Somos hechos de cada uno a cada otro. Nuestro deber es para el bien común y no podemos seguir neglectando eso. El retiro portable.

• 2:59Ryan Holiday?

  Es en el futuro, en una vacación, en tu día libre. Eso es cuando planeamos salir a la naturaleza. Creemos que allí encontraremos paz y liberación de la presión de los demandas diarias de la vida. Sin embargo, esto nunca parece realmente suceder tan a menudo como pensamos, ¿verdad? Y cuando obtenemos esa paz, es difícil mantenerla una vez que regresamos al frío. Así que para un estoico, todo esto es locura. El verdadero retiro es a la libertad de nuestra propia mente y de nuestra propia alma, para considerar los dones que ya tenemos que pueden ser un refugio para todo el tiempo, si tomamos el tiempo diario para hacerlo. Esto es de la "Día Stoico diario", meditación diaria en el "Día Stoico Journal", que espero que revisen.

• 3:44Ryan Holiday?

  Tenemos algunas citas de Marcus Aurelius y Epictetus aquí para terminar. "La gente busca retiro por sí mismo en el país, en el mar o en las montañas. Tú estás muy bien en el hábito de desechar esas mismas cosas, pero esta es completamente la trae de una persona basada. Cuando puedes en cualquier momento encontrar tal retiro en ti mismo, de ninguna parte puedes encontrar un retiro más pacífico y menos ocupado que en tu propia alma, especialmente si a la inspección cercana está lleno de suavidad, lo cual, digo, no es más que ser bien ordenado. Trata a ti mismo a menudo de este retiro y súbelo. Meditaciones de Marcus Aurelius, 4.3.

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  Remember that it is not only the desire for wealth and position that debases and subjugates us, but also the desire for peace, leisure, travel, and learning. It doesn't matter what the external thing is, the value we place on it subjugates us to another. Where our heart is set, there are impediment lies. That's Epictetus's Discourses 4.4. Remember that your ruling reason becomes unconquerable when it rallies and relies on itself, so that it won't do anything contrary to its own will, even if its position is irrational. How much more unconquerable if its judgments are careful and made rationally. Therefore, the mind free from passions is an impenetrable fortress, and a person has

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  no more secure place of refuge for all time. That's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 8.48. You know, it must have been really hard to be Marcus. I mean, we, we think about, sometimes the American media teases presidents for how much they play golf, or, you know, jet off to Mar-a-Lago, or Camp David, or any of those sort of retreats. But the truth is, it must be extraordinarily hard to be the head of state. Endless meetings, endless responsibilities, endless criticism, endless pressure. You're trapped in this house. You live at the office, literally. And so leaders need escapes. They need hobbies.

• 5:53Ryan Holiday?

  Talk about this in Stillness is the Key, Churchill's, you know, hobby of bricklaying and painting, you know, Eisenhower plays golf, all that's important. But what Marcus Aurelius is saying is, and I think this is true for all of us, you're not actually able to get away from it all with a hobby, with a trip, with a vacation. And in fact, in my own experience, often I come back to the office from vacation more stressed out. When I had Matt Berninger on the podcast from The National, we talked about how, you know, you think, hey, I'm gonna take a couple of weeks vacation and relax, get down to a lower pace of life, recharge, then when I come back, I'll be better. It probably took me like eight, nine months into the pandemic to really detox from the daily grind of work to adjust to a slower pace of life.

• 6:36Ryan Holiday?

  So the idea that two weeks, or a trip to the beach, or a trip to the mountains, is gonna help you get away from it all, that a seven-day meditation retreat is gonna do it for you. It's not. It can help, but it's not a ma... There's no magical solution. There's no pill you can take. There's no trip you can take. There's no dark room in the back of your house you can go to. There's no beautiful landscaped backyard that will do it. No. You have to be able to turn inward. You have to be able to cultivate that peace in yourself. And that's better, too. Don't you want it on demand? Vacations are expensive. You gotta get on planes, or they can be blocked from a pandemic, or, you know, scrutiny from a whatever. You know, you can't flee.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  Epicurus says, "Every man flees himself." Emerson has a great essay on travel, and he talks about how many of us bring ruins to the ruins we visit. No. You stay put. You do the internal work. You find the retreat, the refuge, inside your own mind, inside your own soul, inside your own principles, inside your own meditation, inside your own journaling, inside the walk that you take, right? You gotta be able to find it and cultivate it on demand. Much better for you, I promise. Focus on that. Focus on cultivating the inward retreat, as Marcus had to do. You never know, right? A pandemic, a war, things can block us from the trips, right?

• 8:02Ryan Holiday?

  A travel delay, bad weather, things can prevent us from having that. But if we have it on the inside, you can feel at peace and serene even as you are sitting in the airport waiting for your delayed and delayed and delayed flight. That's what you want. You can have it even at court, as Marcus really said. You can have it even when you're president. Good systems, good internal discipline, good thoughts, a good soul. This is the best place of refuge and relaxation. So I hope you give yourself that gift, and I hope you put in the work so you can have it when you need it. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.