Are You Holding Your Shield?

"The world has asked a lot of us over the last few months." Ryan describes the sacrifices we've all had to make and why they were so necessary on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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 at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  Are you holding your shield? The world has asked a lot of us over the last few months. We had to stop traveling. We had to shut down our businesses. We had to take our kids out of school. It asked even more of some of us: the doctors who had to work round-the-clock shifts, the nurses who did the same. There are those among us whose businesses will never reopen and whose jobs will never come back. There are some of us who didn't get to say goodbye to people we loved, who had to watch funerals over the internet. In a beautiful article a few weeks ago, Stephen Pressfield, who we interviewed with Daily Stoic recently, spoke about how the Spartans, the ancient Greeks who the Stoics admired so much, would have responded to this kind of collective sacrifice. He quotes Plutarch,

• 1:14Ryan Holiday?

  who explained why the Spartans punished with death the soldier who dropped his shield, but not his other protective gear. "Because the helmet and breastplate are worn to protect the individual alone," Plutarch said, "but the shield is born to protect the whole line." "Why are we asked to wear surgical or face masks in public to practice social distancing, to observe self-quarantining?" Stephen asks. Answer: "Because these practices are not for the individual alone, but for the protection of the whole line." This moment we are in is a test. It's a test of your character. It's a test of your Stoicism. It's asking whether you just pay lip service to Sympathia, or whether you actually believe

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  it, whether you can embody your philosophy, as Epictetus said. We talked about this with John Brownstein. "The mask is not good for you. Social distancing is not for you. It's for the grandmother of the person you never met. It's for the chemo patient. It's because you might be a carrier and not know it. And so, in wearing a mask, you protect the strangers you see and the strangers they see too." In deciding to eat the deposit on your family vacation, to pay for extra sick leave for your workers, to donate to a food bank, you are not helping yourself. You are doing something far more important and far more noble. You are protecting the whole line. And as a Stoic, as a Spartan, as a citizen, that is your job.

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

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