It’ll Keep You Waiting

Wisdom tells us that things are as they always have been…and always will be. So don’t take it all so personally.🎟 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'll Keep You Waiting. Marcus Aurelius must have hoped for a better Rome than the one he lived in. He hoped people were capable of more, capable of better. And he was disappointed. He was disappointed, as people have always been disappointed. That's what's so striking about meditations, how timeless many of his frustrations are, how universal and modern many of his observations about people seem to be. People have been waiting for the world to change for a millennia. People have been hoping that this time it's different, that there's been a breakthrough in human nature. But alas. Look, individuals can change. People, the world, it abideth forever. It is undefeated. This isn't to say that you shouldn't try.

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  This isn't to say that we can't make a difference here or there. This isn't to say that we can't alleviate needless suffering or help others. It isn't to say that we ourselves can't be a bright light within that darkness. That's what the virtue of justice is all about, what right thing right now is all about. But still, wisdom tells us that things are as they've always been and always will be. So don't take it all so personally. Don't let naive or false hope build you up or break you down. Don't stay up waiting for the world to change. It probably won't.