You Really Can’t Hear This Enough | Practice Silence

One of the most highlighted passages in the digital version of The Daily Stoic is the December 9th quote from Seneca:“Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay; yet we easily let others encroach on our lives—worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”--- And with today's meditation on the day's Daily Journal excerpt, Ryan reminds us that it takes courage saying less and to be bold in your silence. That’s why we created our own additions to the rich history of memento mori, including: The memento mori medallion , memento mori signet ring And the memento mori pendant, All these were created to remind us that we must live NOW, while there is still time.⏳ You can view our entire Memento Mori Collection at dailystoic.com/mm✉️ 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.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  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.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  You really can't hear this enough. One of the most highlighted passages in the ebook version of The Daily Stoic is the December 9th quote from Seneca. "Were all the geniuses of history to focus on a single theme they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind," Seneca says. "No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay. Yet we easily let others encroach on our lives. Worse, we often pave the way by those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passersbys. But to how many do each of us hand over our lives? We're tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time,

• 1:24Speaker 00

  the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers." This makes sense, you know? Property and money and possessions, these things are tangible. We can see them clearly when they are taken from us. Time, on the other hand, is more abstract. When our time is eaten up by other people or frittered away on trivial matters, we don't even notice. In The Daily Stoic, the whole month of December is themed around Memento Mori, because the year is ending. But with Halloween around the corner here in The Daily Stoic email and on the podcast, I thought I'd do a deep dive into that theme for this month, because you really can't hear enough of it. We can't live as if we have forever, as if we have unlimited time. This, of course, is an easy concept to nod your head along to.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Or to double tap when you see on Instagram. But how long does that idea stay with you? How quickly do other thoughts fill the space? Will you be able to call on that reminder in life's stressful moments? Different generations have attempted to keep this idea at hand in different ways. The result can be seen across generations of writing and art and music and jewelry and ritual. Roman generals employed aides to remind them of this fact, their moments of greatest triumph. Philosophers have kept skulls on their desks for millennia. Beneath the Church of Santa Maria in Rome, there's a crypt built in 1630 decorated with the remains of 4,000 friars. In the middle, there is a plaque inscribed with three different languages that state,

• 2:53Speaker 00

  "What you are now, what we once were, what we are now, you shall be." They were all trying to remember, "We can go at any moment." While the times change and it can no longer be practical to keep an aide to whisper death in your ear, to remind you that time is short, the benefits of memento mori remain. That's why I spent all this time designing these cool memento mori things for Daily Stoic. I'm holding this here. This is the memento mori medallion. I carry in my pocket usually. It's based on that famous still life with a skull painting, which shows the three essentials of life, of existence. The tulip, which is life, the skull, which is death, the hourglass with this time. And then this is my memento mori ring, which I'm wearing. I've got it here.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  It says, "You could leave life right now." And I leave it to you to repeat the second half of that quote, "Let that determine what you do and say and think." The idea is to remind you that we must live now. We must protect the time that we have because once it's gone, we can't get it back. It's a reminder that generations have been attempting to keep at hand, to keep front of mind, for very good reason. If you want to check out the memento mori collection, just go to dailystoic.com/mm and I hope you find something you like.

• 4:17Ryan Holiday?

  Social media teaches us to have an opinion about everything. Silence beckons us to speak. We live in a loud culture and we try to keep up by being louder in return. And how much trouble does this cause us? How much might we learn if we spent more time listening to others than trying to sandwich our opinions in at every turn? How much of what we say do we come to regret? So really, the truly loud thing to say is nothing. So spend some time writing your thoughts down this weekend. See how many of them you can keep to yourself. Be bold in your silence and how much you hold your tongue this week. One of the hardest parts about putting out a book is all the interviews I have to do. I feel like I talk more than I've ever talked in my life.

• 4:58Ryan Holiday?

  And it's such a violation of how I try to comport myself, how I want to live, what's healthy to live. People should not be asking for your opinion as much as they have been asking me in the last couple of weeks. People should not be as interested in me as they've been in the last couple of weeks. I shouldn't be seeking out attention or platforms the way that I have been in the last couple of weeks. It's like a deliberately unhealthy period. It's almost like gaining weight for an acting role or something. It's just, it's part of the job. I have to do it. It's like pulling all-nighters for some project where there's no alternative. It's not good for you. You shouldn't be doing it. And then your diet suffers and all this other stuff. That's just part of the job. I have to come to understand that. But I also work really hard not to let it go to my head because I don't want to be

• 5:41Ryan Holiday?

  a babbling, self-absorbed, self-obsessed person who thinks that people should care as much as they've cared the last couple of weeks. That's just the reality of putting out a book. It's been weird. It's been weird. And like I say, one of the benefits of philosophy is that it centers you. You come back to it. And so I'll give you three quotes today from Zeno, two or four quotes today, two from Zeno, actually, that should help you and certainly helping me to think about. Zeno says, "Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue." It's inevitable, right? An actor goes on a... On a press tour and they say something dumb because they're just forced to talk, they're forced to answer all these questions. You get in trouble the more you talk.

• 6:23Ryan Holiday?

  That's just something I found. As Robert Greene says, always say less than necessary. Another quote from Zeno, to the, to a youngster talking nonsense, Zeno said, "The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth, so we might listen more and talk less." It's beautiful. I love that. And then Plato, talking about Cato the Younger, says, "Cato practiced the kind of public speech capable of moving the masses, believing proper political philosophy takes care like any great city to maintain the warlike element. But he was never seen practicing in front of others and no one ever heard him rehearse his speech. When he was told that people blamed him for his silence, he replied, 'Better they not blame my life. I begin to speak only when I'm certain that what I'll say

• 7:05Ryan Holiday?

  isn't best left unsaid.'" Beautiful. That's something I do try to carry forward when I do talks and stuff. People go, "What do you think about this? What do you think about that?" And I try to, on a pretty regular basis, maybe even once per talk, go, "I don't know. I don't know about that." Because you don't want to get the habit of forcing an answer about things when you don't know. If you don't know, it takes courage to be like, "I don't know," or "I don't care. I have not studied that. I don't have enough information." To be okay being thought dumb or foolish, as Epictetus says, silence does that. Practicing silence is a discipline. It takes discipline. It is not easy. And you will sometimes look silly and you will sometimes hurt people's feelings. But I think you'll hurt people's feelings less by not talking than you will by talking. And

• 7:50Ryan Holiday?

  that gets us to the final quote. This is from Seneca's Plathiestes. He says, "Silence is a lesson learned from the many sufferings of life." Another great quote I love from Seneca, he says, "When I think of all the things I said, I envy the mute." Meaning, he wishes he couldn't talk because he said so much dumb stuff that when he thinks back on it, he's almost overwhelmed with shame or awkwardness. And the hard part's about being right or having a social media presence is you know what's out there and you cringe. You think about it. There's always a tweet. There's always a dumb article. There's always a time you jumped out to take a hot take. You should have just left it there because you didn't know, you didn't know enough, you didn't put the work in, you didn't actually care, you forced it, you let your ego get a

• 8:33Ryan Holiday?

  hold of you, and that never makes good work. So let's practice a little silence this week. If you have something to say, write it down in your journal. Don't say it on social media. Always say less than necessary. Try to say less than necessary. That's the Stoic way. And if you could, please support Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Bold. You can pick up a copy anywhere books are sold. Get a bunch of bonuses if you do it at dailystoic.com/preorder. Thanks. I'll talk to you soon.