These Are The People Watching Out For You

Ryan explains why we should thank the people who put their lives on the line for our freedom, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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.

• 0:04Ryan 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 at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:27Ryan Holiday?

  These are the people watching out for you. One of the most inspiring themes in the history of Stoicism is how the Stoics put it all on the line for someone or something else. There was Cato refusing to roll over and just let Caesar destroy the Republic. There was Marcus Aurelius, who stayed in Rome as the plague ravaged, serving with great dedication to the cost of his personal health. There was Thrasse's obstinate resistance to Nero's tyranny. There was Helvidius speaking out directly against Vespasian, even after Vespasian threatened his life. There was James Stockdale in that prison camp in Vietnam, suffering great pain and anguish to bring an end

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  to the torture that his fellow POWs endured. Perhaps Seneca was contemplating his own heroic end when he wrote admiringly of those who rank virtue ahead of personal safety. "We should cherish the body with the greatest care," he writes, "but we should also be prepared when reason, self-respect, and duty demand the sacrifice to deliver it even to the flames." In Courage is Calling, I write about two Marines working a guard post in Ramadi in 2008, when a truck bomber raced towards the small base they protected. Two corporals stepped forward in unison and began to fire. 2,000 pounds of explosives went off as they unloaded their weapons into the accelerating truck.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  Just six seconds elapsed between the truck's appearance and its horrible destruction. It was enough time for the local police to get away, but not the two Marines. But because these two young men didn't know how to run from danger, General John Kelly would say in a speech a few years later, 150 people were saved. Heroes like these two young Marines are not uncommon. Just last week at the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber killed 13 US service members as they worked tirelessly and at great risk to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Taliban. In reading the many moving statements from friends and family members of those 13 troops,

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  one grieves the loss, yes, but also finds great comfort and inspiration in the fact that such people exist. Indeed, as Kelly said, "It is these heroes, the ones that are prepared to deliver themselves to the flames if duty demands it, who are on watch for us all over the world tonight." Rest in peace to these 13 amazing service members, all the service members in all the armed forces all over the world who protect us and put themselves at great risk for us. It's a tragedy of immense proportions. And I wanted to write this little email in honor of that sacrifice,

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  which I think goes to the core of what makes people great, certainly at the core of what Stoicism is all about.