Joy Even So (Part 1)

John Adams' life was not an easy one. First, because it was just hard to be alive in the 18th century. It was hard to make dinner. It was hard to stay warm in the winter. It was hard to travel even short distances. It was hard to not die of the endless diseases and injuries that were so tragically common.✉️ 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.

• 0:03Ryan 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.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  Joy even so. John Adams's life was not an easy one. First, because it was just hard to be alive in the 18th century. It was hard to make dinner. It was hard to stay warm in the winter. It's hard to travel even short distances. It was hard not to die of the endless diseases and injuries that were so tragically common. And then, of course, there were the years of war that he lived through, the long postings overseas, the political intrigues, the slanders in the press, the betrayals and the heartbreaks. "Griefs upon griefs, disappointments upon disappointments" was how Adams once described life. "It's impossible to read his letters and not sense, as we said recently about Marcus Aurelius's meditations, a kind of world-weariness.

• 1:12Ryan Holiday?

  And yet, for all that weighed on Adams, like the Stoics, it never broke him. On the contrary, he smiled his way through, because that full quote goes as follows: 'Griefs upon griefs, disappointments upon disappointments.' What then? This is a gay, merry world, notwithstanding." His great biographer, David McCullough, writes in John Adams that this observation could have served as Adams's epitaph. It could have been Seneca, or Epictetus's, or Marcus's, too. Yes, life is hard. People can suck. Yet it's still a gay and merry world. Still, joy is possible. Still, the best way is to face life with a smile, never a sneer.