Don’t Follow His Example (For Once) | Actors In A Play

Don’t follow Cato’s example. Keep fighting for virtue and the common good.🎥 Watch Patrick Dempsey’s interview on YouTube 🎥 Watch Matthew McConaughey's interview on YouTube📓 Grab your own leather bound signed edition of The Daily Stoic! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour✉️ 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 FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  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.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Don't follow his example for once. Imagine believing in some ideal your whole life. Family has been committed to a vision of your country for generations. Now, you know this country isn't perfect. You know that not everyone agrees with you, but you're confident that when it comes down to it, things will turn out all right. Now imagine waking up one morning and finding the person that you find most morally reprehensible, who stands for everything you stand against, is now in charge. While this might all sound rather contemporary, it's actually the story of Cato the Younger, the ultimate man of principle, the Stoic that all the other Stoics admired. With an almost radical commitment

• 1:24Speaker 00

  to virtue, he defended Rome's old ways, the mass maiorum, and he led an opposition against Julius Caesar, who was determined to seize ultimate power at all costs. And when Caesar and his followers defeated Cato's side in Rome's civil war, bringing an end to the Republic and the start of Caesar's dictatorship, how did Cato respond? He called for his sword, checked its razor's edge against his finger.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Now I am my own master, he said, and then he killed himself in protest, preferring to die rather than submit to what he considered tyranny. Cato's example in life and in death has long stood as a powerful one and inspired not just the other ancient Stoics, but also the founders. He was pure, he was principled, he was powerful. It's also understandable, he was devastated, all felt lost, he was in danger. He did not want to become a victim of Caesar. Yet, in Lives of the Stoics, our profile of Cato, which is largely sympathetic to him, presents an alternative view of his final protest by way of Napoleon of all people. Napoleon, who once displayed a bust of Cato in his Hall of Heroes, notes,

• 2:35Speaker 00

  "The conduct of Cato was applauded by his contemporaries and has been admired by history, but who benefited from his death? Caesar. Who was pleased by it? Caesar. And to who was it a tragedy? To Rome and his party. No, he killed himself out of spleen and despair, Napoleon says. His death was the weakness of a great soul, the error of a Stoic and a blot on his life." Now, Napoleon is not a perfect character himself, much closer to Caesar than anyone, but he's got a point here. What if Cato had stuck around? What did his suicide, literal or metaphorical, actually accomplish? Nothing, it was the end, for him anyway.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  And so, we should all stick around, metaphorically and literally. Perhaps this election or any major event did not turn out the way you hoped. So, doesn't that make you sticking around even more important? Stay in the fight, try to make a positive difference, even if your options are limited. Don't give up, keep doing your job, as we said yesterday. In this regard, don't follow Cato's example, keep fighting for virtue and the common good. We still need you in the game. In fact, we need you more than ever. By the way, I am recording this before the results of the election. So I don't actually know how it turned out, but I wanted to put this out there as kind of a document. I don't know.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  I have no way of knowing, but I think it's true. Whoever you are, however you lean politically, and whatever it is we're talking about here, big and small, major events, major setbacks, elections, whatever, stay in the game. Keep doing your job. That's what a stoic needs to do.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  Actors in a play. This is the November 8th entry in The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. This is one of my favorite quotes from Epictetus. I have asked so many people about it over the years, all the different actors I've had on the podcast. I've asked Matthew McConaughey and Patrick Dempsey. I've asked comedians about it. I just love this quote. He says, "Remember that you are an actor in a play, playing a character according to the will of the playwright. If it's a short play, then it's short. If it's long, it's long. If he wishes you to play the beggar, play even that role well, just as you would if it were a cripple, a honcho, or an everyday person. For this is your duty, to perform well the character assigned to you.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  The selection belongs to another." And then, as I write in The Daily Stoic, we have to remember that Marcus Rios didn't want to be emperor. He wasn't a politician who sought office. He wasn't a true heir to the throne. As far as we can tell from his letters and from history, what he really wanted to be was a philosopher. But the powerful elite in Rome, including the Emperor Hadrian, saw something in him, and they groomed him for power. Marcus Rios was adopted and put in line for the throne because they knew he could handle it. Meanwhile, Epictetus lived much of his life as a slave and was persecuted for his philosophical teachings. Both did quite a lot with the roles they were assigned. Our station in life can be as random as a roll of the dice. Some of us are born into privilege, others into adversity.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Sometimes we're given the opportunities we want, at other times, we're given a lucky break. But to us, this can all feel like a burden. The Stoics remind us that whatever happens to us today or over the course of our lives, wherever we fall in the intellectual, social, or philosophical spectrum, our job is not to complain or bemoan our plight, but to do the best we can and to fulfill it. Is there room for flexibility and ambition? Of course, the history of the stage is littered with stories of bit parts that turned into starring roles and indelible characters that were expanded into future adaptations. But this begins with acceptance and understanding and a desire to excel at whatever we have been assigned. I'm heading to London here very shortly. I'm going to be doing those talks.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  You can come see me on stage, London, Rotterdam, Dublin, and then Vancouver and Toronto. I hope to see you there. You can grab tickets at RyanHoliday.net. But the idea is while you're there, while you're on stage, whatever, whatever role you have been assigned, and it's not just like your life role. You know, Marcus Aurelius is the emperor, Epictetus is this person overcoming incredible adversity, Stockdale is a prisoner of war, but also the little roles. You have this part in front of you. How are you going to act with this stranger? How are you going to act with your kid in this moment? How are you going to act as a person in the great drama that is or was an election? Right? How are you going to act in the moment of time that you happen to be in? Are you going to play this role?

• 7:20Speaker 00

  Are you going to complain and, oh, they don't give me the good parts? Oh, the director has it out for me. Oh, they don't understand how great I am. No, you have to turn this role, this one in front of you, into something. That's the idea. And this is something I'm very fascinated with. I'll link to my interview with Dempsey and McConaughey, because I think this is a really important Stoic concept that's worth chasing down. And thinking about it, it can change your frame day to day. I am an actor in a play. I didn't choose the role. I didn't write the lines, but this is my shot and I'm going to turn it into something.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Thanks.