You Can’t Escape This

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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?

  You can't escape this. A flat tire, an extra fee tacked on to a hotel bill, a cracked screen on your phone, a bike stolen from your garage, a large charge they won't refund, a deal blown up by a missed email. Nobody likes these things, but does anyone think that a life without them is possible? No, of course not. We understand that sometimes you get ripped off. Sometimes you make mistakes. Sometimes stuff falls apart on the one-yard line. Okay, then why are you so upset? You know that it's a statistical certainty, a basic fact of life. Yet here you are cursing as if it's unfair, as if you've been singled out, instead of just accepting it, instead of just saying to yourself, as Marcus Aurelius tried to say of shameless people,

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  who he also believed were a statistical inevitability. He said, "Okay, so this is one of those people." "Don't ask for the impossible," he said. "Don't get upset that someone who was bound to exist exists or that something that was bound to happen has happened." We can't escape it. We can only accept it and be grateful that it's rarer than it could be.