Failure Doesn’t Define You—Neither Does Success | Always The Same

Ulysses S. Grant knew what the Stoics knew—that outside circumstances don’t say anything about us, that it didn’t matter, as Epictetus said, what we bear, only how we bear it. 🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ 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 Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  Failure doesn't define you, and neither does success. Of course, he was disappointed. It had been a long and hard fall. He descended from West Point to second lieutenant during the Mexican-American War, but now Ulysses S. Grant was selling firewood by the side of the road. He must have hoped that no one would recognize him, and his heart would have sank when Simon Buckner, an old school and war buddy, did. "Good God, Grant," he burst, "what are you doing?" But Grant decided he would not be ashamed. "I am solving the problem of poverty," he replied. Grant knew what the Stoics knew, that outside circumstances don't say anything about us at all,

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  that it didn't matter, as Epictetus said, "what we bear, only how we bear it." Grant was feeding his family. He was doing honest work. What was so bad about that? After all, Cleiantheus was a lowly water carrier in Athens and proud of it. Now, had Grant been caught stealing to support his drinking habit, that would have been different. Or if he'd accepted a Confederate commission because the pay was better, again, that would be different. As I talked about in my episode with Ron Chernow on the Daily Stoic Podcast, who wrote one of his best biographies about Grant, Grant understood this so-called menial work of selling firewood didn't say anything about him. What he cared about was making an honest living and providing for his family.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  The position didn't define him, and not only was this position temporary, but a few years later, he would become general of the Union Army, and a few years after that, President of the United States. And yet again, Grant would refuse to let those high positions define him either. As Marcus Aurelius commanded himself, "We must accept it without arrogance and let it go with indifference." Like Grant, he saw that success and failure were meaningless. They were impostors. A rock thrown in the air gains nothing by going up, he said, and nothing by falling down. What matters is who we are. What matters is the character we live by.

• 3:11Ryan Holiday?

  Always the same. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. Think by way of example on the times of Vespasian, and you'll see all these things marrying, raising children, falling ill, dying, wars, holiday feasts, commerce, farming, flattering, pretending, suspecting, scheming, praying that others die, grumbling over one's lot, falling in love, amassing fortunes, lusting after office and power. Now that life of theirs is dead and gone, the times of Trajan, again, the same. Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 4, 32. And then the meditation. Ernest Hemingway opens his book, The Sun Also Rises, with a Bible verse.

• 3:56Ryan Holiday?

  "One generation patheth, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. The sun also rises, and the sun goeth down, and resteth to the place where he arose." It was this passage, his fascinating editor, Maxwell Perkins, who I urge you to read about. Perkins would say that it contained all the wisdom of the ancient world. And what wisdom is that? One of the most striking things about history is just how long human beings have been doing what they do. Though certain attitudes and practices have come and gone, what's left are people, living, dying, loving, fighting, crying, and laughing.

• 4:39Ryan Holiday?

  Breathless media reports or popular books often perpetuate the belief that we've reached the apex of humanity, or that this time, things are really different. The irony is that people have believed that for centuries. Strong people have to resist this notion. They know that with few exceptions, things are the same as they've always been and always will be. You're just like the people who came before you. And you're but a brief stopover until the people just like you, who will come after. The earth abides forever, but we will come and go.

• 5:18Ryan Holiday?

  And I mean, I think meditations itself is a remarkable demonstration of this, probably not accidentally. Right? All the things that Marcus is talking about, complaining about, worrying about, you know, seizing on are immensely familiar and accessible to all of us. Right? 2,000 years ago, you know, sometime in the year, let's say 160 AD, Marcus struggles to get out of bed and writes a passage about how he likes to huddle under the blankets and stay warm. Exactly the same, right? You think about the struggles Marcus really has with Commodus. Maybe that's what you're going through right now. You think of Seneca trying to contain Nero, telling himself, you know, I'm, I'm one of the good guys.

• 6:03Ryan Holiday?

  I'm, I'm one of the adults in the room. And you think about how politically people in the capital, which is named after Capitoline Hill, senators, right? Same position as people like Seneca had, were telling themselves about the current president. Right? The same thing over and over and over and over again. People are people, places are places. I did a meditation on this. We did this road trip and we stopped in Tombstone, Arizona, which, you know, is the site of the, the gunfight at OK Corral. And what's fascinating, you walk down the streets of Tombstone. This is a place that's burned to the ground, been rebuilt to look historic for the most part. Some of the buildings actually are pretty old, but the point is these bars, what stickers do they have in the window?

• 6:47Ryan Holiday?

  The sticker is new, that wasn't a technology in 1880 or whatever, but they've got these stickers in the window. What do the stickers say? You can't carry a handgun inside this establishment, right? Same sticker I have on the, you know, front of the painted porch. But in the 1880s, that's what the gunfight at the OK Corral was about. It was about whether people could openly carry guns in town. I'm not making a Second Amendment argument here. I'm saying that people were fighting and arguing about the exact same thing, just as the Earps had moved to Tombstone, Arizona. Why? To make their fortune, to make a name for themselves, to have a better life, the same reason that maybe you're moving to Arizona, or Austin, or Europe, right?

• 7:32Ryan Holiday?

  It doesn't matter. People are people, and they've always been doing the same things. And I think what's so beautiful and reassuring, but also humbling about Stoic philosophy, is these reminders that not that much has changed, that the hardware issues remain the same. The software issues remain the same despite all the updates and attempts to fix the bugs. So we can calm down a little bit, right? People are people, places are places. History is the same thing happening over and over and over again. Time, as Matthew McConaughey's character says in True Detective, quoting Nietzsche, "Time is a flat circle."

• 8:16Ryan Holiday?

  It's beautiful, as I said, haunting, humbling, all these things at the same time. And it's something we can't lose track of, and it's something we have to think about constantly. And when I hold Meditations, that's what I think of. I've actually, I've got the leather edition right here in my hands. Since I got my first copy of Meditations, I've been going through that one. Like, I have a very worn copy, has lots of notes in it. I went through it, and I've been rereading it. It's on my nightstand. As I've been going through and rereading it, what strikes me most is that I'm still making notes in the same spots about the same things, just as other people have been doing for thousands of years. Maybe you have Seneca on your nightstand,

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  just as Jefferson had Seneca on his nightstand when he died. Just as, you know, Cato died holding a copy of Socrates, right? It's a timeless tradition we're a part of, both intentionally and unintentionally. And there's something beautiful and terrifying in that.

• 9:22Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.