Run Down The List. Where Are They Now?

It’s been generations upon generations now. For thousands and thousands of years, humans have been doing the same things, the Stoics observed. 🎟️ Come see Ryan Holiday LIVE in Austin, Texas on September 17! | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.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?

  Run down the list. Where are they now? It's been generations upon generations now. For thousands and thousands of years, human beings have been doing the same things, as the Stoics observed. They've been chasing power and fame. They've been accumulating stuff. They've been arguing over trivial things. They've been trying to impress other people. "Where are those people now?" Marcus Aurelius asked in an important passage in Meditations. "Where are they now?" "Run through the list," he tells himself. "Run through the list of the big, powerful historical figures you knew personally. Where are they now?" Gone, already forgotten, already worm food.

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  He dismisses many of these figures, perhaps alluding to Hadrian or Nero or Caligula as people who worked in vain, who failed to do what they should have. He sees this all as very tragic, that they were fixed on the wrong things, that they tried to find satisfaction in the wrong things. If we run down a version of this list ourselves, we'll find the same thing. How many pro athletes from our youth are already old, forgotten?

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  Or in some cases, broke. What happened to the vice president when you were born? Do you even know who it was? What about the top 10 people on the Forbes list from 15 years ago? What about that jerk you used to work with? Life is very brief. It's far too brief to spend it chasing the wrong things, to be attentive to the wrong things. It's too short to spend it the way too many people do, which is to say, and as Marcus Realist does say in Meditations, unthinkingly plotting, flattering, seeking, arguing, and throwing parties. Don't waste what's left of your life, as Marcus put it. Spend it on what matters to you before you become just another forgotten name on someone

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  else's forgotten list.