How To Find Treasure | What Expensive Things Cost

The reason we don’t get what we want is because we want it too much. We reach for it with too much force. We lack the patience, we lack the poise. In Buddhism, they speak of willful will. More often than not, that is our problem. In her beautiful book Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindberg writes on the hunt for sea shells: “The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach–waiting for a gift from the sea.”It’s our expectations, the Stoics tell us, that get us in trouble.--- And in today's excerpt from The Daily Stoic Journal, Ryan examines the Stoic idea that expensive things cost more to us than their dollar value by reflecting on a recent situation in his life. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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.

• 0:02Ryan 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. How to Find Treasure. The reason we don't get what we want is because we want it too much. We reach for it with too much force.

• 0:47Ryan Holiday?

  We lack the patience. We lack the poise. In Buddhism, they speak of willful will. More often than not, this is our problem. In her beautiful book Gift from the Sea, Anne-Marie Lindberg writes on the hunt for seashells. "The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient," she writes. "To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but a lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach, waiting for a gift from the sea." It's our expectations, the Stoics tell us, that get us in trouble. They make us rigid. They close us off. They make us impatient.

• 1:32Ryan Holiday?

  They make us greedy. They're also the reason that we miss what is already there in front of us. In one of his own beautiful analogies, Epictetus says that we are like the kid with their hand in the candy jar. Our closed hand wrapped around a fist of candy traps us, leaving us with nothing. Life is full of treasure, but only those who have conquered their willful will can possess it. Only those who have learned how to relax, who can practice what the Stoics call the art of acquiescence, can truly accept it. We are not in control. We must have faith and patience. We must not want anything in particular, but be open. Indeed, love, that's what amor fati means, love whatever washes up on the shore for us.

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  And this is how we'll find treasure and happiness.

• 2:20Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, I came across a gift from the sea. I wasn't looking for a particular book. I was in a bookstore in seaside Florida, and it was there on the table, and I bought it, and I loved it. And I was just raving about it to a friend who I made go pick it up when they were in New York City. I think you would really like it as well. We carried it to Painted Porch. You can check it out. I'll link to it in today's show notes as well.

• 2:48Ryan Holiday?

  What expensive things cost? From the cynics, the Stoics learned the powerful practice of focusing on the true worth of things, that the cost of an item isn't simply what it's sold for, but what it costs the owner to own. So much of our desire for material goods comes at the great price of both anxiety and the loss of our serenity. And even when gained, these things often leave us more anxious and less serene. So today, spend some time reflecting on what the things you buy actually cost you, and see if they are really worth what you have been paying. And that's from today's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. And we have some quotes from Seneca and Epictetus here.

• 3:32Ryan Holiday?

  "So concerning the things we pursue and for what we vigorously exert ourselves, we owe this consideration. Either there is nothing useful in them, or most aren't useful. Some of them are superfluous, while others aren't worth that much. But we don't discern this and see them as free when they cost us so dearly." That's Seneca's moral letters. Then we have Epictetus. "If a person gave your body away to some passerby, you'd be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along so that they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled. Have you no shame?" Epictetus asks. And then we have Diogenes Laertus quoting Diogenes of Sinope. That's Diogenes the cynic.

• 4:16Ryan Holiday?

  He says, "We sell things of great value for things of very little, and vice versa." You know, they say the best things in life are free. And that's not really true. But I would say that a lot of things are much more expensive than they appear, right? So we chase these things. We want these things. We want a fancy car, and then we're worried about...

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  Making sure nothing happens to that fancy car. I remember a few years ago, I put new floors in my house. And on the one hand, I hated the old floors and it made the house look better. And they were easier to walk on and improve my life. But then we had kids and now all of a sudden, there's this part of me that worries about the floors all the time, right? I don't want them to get scratched. I don't want water to sit on them. And the dog went to the bathroom. And so this thing that cost me money, it was not cheap to put new floors in the house, didn't just cost what it cost. It cost all the anxiety. It cost the arguments between me and my wife about who's to blame for this scratch on the floor from the couch.

• 5:25Ryan Holiday?

  You know, it cost goodwill between me and my kid. Because I'm like, hey, why did you spill? You know, that part of you that just blurts out, you know, trying to protect things. And the truth is, it really doesn't matter. I remember I was, I was talking to a therapist about some version of this. And she said, just write it off, like write it off in your head. You spent the money, it's gone. You can't try to keep it all together, right? You can't try to keep it pristine. It's like the people who buy a toy and then they want it in mint condition. I mean, this is, this is not just a violation of the law of entropy. It's a violation of the law of happiness. You will not be happy if this is how you're spending all your time

• 6:07Ryan Holiday?

  trying to keep everything in one place, trying to keep them together. It's an illusion. It will not last. You cannot do it. You have to be able to let go. That's the old Zen saying that, you know, the cup is already broken. The cup is already broken. The Stoics knew that expensive things cost even more than their price tag. That's why there's the great story of Epictetus. He has this lamp, it's stolen. And the next day, he says, I'm gonna go get a cheaper lamp. So I don't have to worry about it getting stolen ever again. And I don't have to be sad that it's missing ever again. So for the Stoics, remember the, it's not just what actually is valuable and isn't. You know, a lot of times we ascribe value to things that are superficial and meaningless and pointless. But also, it's realizing.

• 6:53Ryan Holiday?

  That you are spending even more money than you think on things and you're spending, you're spending your happiness is really what you're spending on. So I want to leave you with that thought. It's not that you live in a pigsty, you don't care about anything. You should try to keep your things nice and not unnecessarily wear them down, but you also cannot resist entropy, you cannot resist time, you cannot resist wear and tear, and if you do so, it comes at the expense. The most important thing, which is time, and the other most important thing, which is your happiness, and the other most important thing, which is the relationships, the people in your life. So you only have so much time to think or worry or spend time on things. Are you going to spend it trying to preserve your floors? You're not even going to live there forever. You're probably going to tear

• 7:38Ryan Holiday?

  them out at some point anyway. No. Focus on what matters.