This Is a Bad Way To Drive (and Live) | A Garden Is Not For Show

With the proliferation of dashcams and the spread of social media, we see these clips everywhere. It’s basically its own genre of video at this point. A driver is frustrated with someone going too slow in front of them, so they honk. Then they swerve, step on the gas to pass them–often waving a middle finger or honking a horn or shouting out a rolled down window as they do so–only to almost immediately get pulled over. Or violently crash. A vivid, painful demonstration of poetic justice a few miles down the road. It would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.---And in today's excerpt from the Daily Stoic, Ryan discusses why it's better to devote your time and energy to actually doing things instead of letting everybody else know that you are doing them.✉️ 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. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  This is a bad way to drive and live. With the proliferation of dash cams and the spread of social media, we see these clips everywhere. It's basically its own genre of video at this point. A driver is frustrated with someone going too slow in front of him, so they honk. Then they swerve and step on the gas to pass them, often waving a middle finger, or honking a horn, or shouting out a rolled down window as they do so, almost to immediately get pulled over, or immediately crash. And the bewildered filmer passes the wreckage just a few miles down the road. It would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous, but it is at least a good reminder, first, that life on the road is dangerous. Any one

• 1:24Ryan Holiday?

  of us could die in an accident at any moment. In fact, nearly 43,000 people died on US roadways in each of the last two years alone. Our modern cars, our modern culture built around highways, is filled with risks, yet we simply choose not to think about it. It's also a good reminder that impulsive emotional decisions are the cause of so much trouble. Yes, slow drivers are annoying. Yes, in many cases, they're breaking the law themselves, and they are preventing us from getting where we are trying to go. Yet, trying to get around them, trying to vent our feelings at them, it's not worth it. Driving is dangerous enough, the Stoics would tell us if they had lived to see cars. Don't add trouble on top of it. Don't blind yourself, distract yourself. None of us have the cognitive resources to spare.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca's wonderful essay on anger is a must read for anyone traveling on the roads these days. He reminds us what an ugly emotion anger is and how silly it is to be screaming at people you will never meet again, especially since they probably didn't inconvenience you on purpose anyway. And certainly, none of it is worth dying over.

• 2:43Ryan Holiday?

  A garden is not for show. This is today's entry, September 15th, in The Daily Stoic.

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  And the quote today is from Epictetus's Discourses 4:8. He says, "First, practice not letting people know who you are. Keep your philosophy to yourself for a bit. In just the manner that fruit is produced, the seed buried for a season, hidden, growing gradually, so that it may come for full maturity. But if the grain sprouts before the stalk is fully developed, it will never ripen. That's the kind of plant you are, displaying fruit too soon, and the winter will kill you." You know, after you listen to this podcast for a while, or follow us on Instagram, it might be tempting to say, "Oh, this is great. I get it. I'm a stoic. I've always been that way."

• 3:34Ryan Holiday?

  But it's not that easy. Just because you agree with the philosophy doesn't mean the roots have fully taken hold. Fooling around with books so you can sound smarter, have an intimidating library is like tending a garden to impress your neighbors. Growing one to feed someone, that's a pure and profitable use of your time. The seeds of Stoicism are long underground. Do the work required to nurture and tend to them, so that they and you are prepared and sturdy for the hard winters of life. The idea is not that we get credit for working on a book, that we get credit for doing this or that. It's that we are actually doing it.

• 4:17Ryan Holiday?

  Right? The doing is important. And I deeply believe this, that, that talking and doing fight for the same resources. And you have to cultivate a willingness to be misunderstood, to be not fully appreciated, to just be like, "I'm working on my stuff, man. I'm developing. I don't need your approval. I don't need your recognition." I talk about this, actually, in "Ego is the Enemy," there was a great Twitter account, or Tumblr account, I forget exactly, a couple of years ago called "I'm Working on My Novel." And it's just people telling other people how they're working on their thing. Are they? Are they really? No, by definition, they are not. They wouldn't have posted this. Right? So, part of this idea is cultivating...

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  You know, Seneca, Epictetus also says, you know, "If you want to improve, be content to be misunderstood and unappreciated. Be content to be foolish. Say, 'I don't know about that.'"

• 5:13Ryan Holiday?

  You know, he means to not talk about being a stoic, not to identify with being a stoic, but to quietly work on being one, to quietly get to work on that project, to put in the hours, to put your butt where it should be. Do the work. Leave the recognition, the understanding, the appreciation to someone or something else. That's not why you're doing it. That's not what's motivating you. That's not what is important.

• 5:42Ryan Holiday?

  So I'm going to leave you here today. Let you get after it, get to work, turn this off. Go after it. Make some progress.