How Stories Teach Us The Truth | Reduce Wants, Increase Happiness

“They seem silly. Aesop tells us stories about dogs and mice and foxes and lions. Children love them of course. Isn’t that proof that they’re childish?”Ryan explains why all stories are windows into the truth, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Pre-order The Boy Who Would Be King, our newest release at Daily Stoic, written by Ryan Holiday in the depths of the pandemic (not unlike the one Marcus ruled through), this new beautifully crafted book is available for preorder now. As a special bonus, if you order this book before March 9th, 2021, you’ll get a FREE audiobook version as well. Go to dailystoic.com/king to pre-order now and you’ll automatically get the free book. This episode is also brought to you by Public Goods, the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients at an affordable price. Everything from coffee to toilet paper & shampoo to pet food. Public Goods is your new everything store, thoughtfully designed for the conscious consumer. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order with no minimum purchase. Just go to publicgoods.com/STOIC or use code STOIC at checkout.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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. 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.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  How Stories Teach the Truth. It seems silly. Aesop tells us stories about dogs and mice and foxes and kittens. Children love these stories, of course, but isn't that proof that they're childish? No, these stories teach us truth. They are fantastical creations that deliver philosophical lessons that we might be otherwise disinclined to learn, lessons about greed, about fear, about human nature, about selfishness and ignorance. The Little Prince is a whimsical surreal story of a little boy. It also beautifully captures innocence and emotion. It lands with you even if you haven't been a little boy for many decades.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  And that is why the Stoics loved poetry. They loved the theater. They didn't see art as frivolous. To them, it was essential. It was a delivery mechanism for truth. Not everything belongs in an aphorism or a discourse. Sometimes, we need to see truth rendered beautifully. Sometimes, we need it in a story. So it sneaks past our defenses. So it implants in our memory. As Saint Exupery writes in The Little Prince, "Sometimes, it's only with the heart that we conceive."

• 1:53Speaker 00

  Reduce wants, increase happiness. The Stoics knew that wanting less increases gratitude, just as wanting more obliterates it. Epictetus focused much of his teachings on helping his students reduce this destructive habit of wanting more. In it, he saw the key to a happy life and to relationships. By practicing the art of wanting less and being grateful for the portion that we already have before us, we are hopping off the so-called hedonic treadmill and taking a real step on the path to a life of real contentment. That's what we're journaling about this week in the Daily Stoic Journal. That's where this little meditation comes from. We've got three quotes from Epictetus.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  He says, "Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet. As something is being passed around and comes to you, reach your hand out and take only a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don't stop it. Hasn't yet come? Don't burn in desire for it. But wait until it arrives in front of you. Act this way with children, a spouse, towards position, with wealth. One day, it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods." That's Epictetus's Incaridion. "When children stick their hand down a narrow goody jar they can't get their full fist out and start crying, drop a few treats and you will get it out. Curb your desire. Don't set your heart on so many things, and you will get what you need." That's Epictetus's Discourses 3:9.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  "Freedom isn't secured by filling up your heart's desire, but by removing your desire." Epictetus's Discourses. It's not that the Stoics didn't like stuff. I mean, they did. They enjoyed life. But they also knew that there is such thing as too much of a good thing. And they tried to enjoy what they had while they had it, but also not be dependent on it. And also, more importantly... Not desire and achieve and acquire so much that it becomes its own burden. And I think that's something we miss. For instance, even about the Epicureans. Like, we think the Epicureans were these sort of pleasure lovers. And to a sense, they were. But it was the simple pleasures.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  It was the right amount that brought them pleasure. And too much becomes not only not a pleasure, but a punishment. There's a joke I like. Someone attended one of Aristotle's dinners and they said, Aristotle, you know what I love about your dinners? I don't regret them the following morning. So this idea of moderation is so essential. It's the key to happiness. The right amount. I remember Steve, my editor and collaborator on The Daily Stoic and The Daily Stoic Journal, said to me once, he said, "Moderation in all things and some things not at all." And I thought that was beautifully expressed. And that's kind of how I try to live my life. You know, Seneca probably took it too far in one direction. Maybe Epictetus took it too far in the other direction.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  And maybe Marcus Aurelius is right there in the Aristotelian mean enough, but not too much. There's two beautiful metaphors there from Epictetus that I think are worth pausing on. He talks about the kid sticking their hand in the candy jar. They get too much. If they could let some of it go, they could get it. But since they can't let it go, they get none of it. That's a beautiful image. But this other one that we're life at a banquet. And I don't know about you, but whenever I'm at a buffet or a banquet, I tend to eat too much. And then it's unhappy. It's unpleasurable, as Aristotle said, you regret it the next day. But if you can find a way to enjoy it, that the food is not really the point. The food is extra. The point is the conversation, the company, the experience. And to take too much, to take more than your share, to be distracted.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Oh, that's coming over here. I want seconds of this. This is just take yourself out of the present moment. And in a sense, it ultimately ends up sort of punishing you. And it takes the fun and the joy out of it. So moderation in all things. He's saying, like, he's being explicit. This banquet thing is a metaphor. He says, "Act this way with children espoused towards position with wealth. And one day, it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods." The less you need, the less you want, the freer you are, the happier you are, and the more you enjoy what you do have. That idea of enough, that idea of the right amount is key. And that's what I'd love for you guys to spend some time thinking about this week. What is enough? Do you have it? Do you really need what you think you need?

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Do you just want it? What would happen if you actually got it? Would it really fulfill the desire the way you think it would? Maybe not. Be well, be moderate. Talk soon.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  In the midst of the pandemic, not unlike a pandemic that Marcus Aurelius went through, I was trying to talk to my kids about the lessons we needed to learn from this. And the result is my newest book, The Boy Who Would Be King. A hundred page beautifully illustrated, all ages fable about the journey of Marcus Aurelius from an ordinary boy to the ruler of the known world. How did he do it? What did he need to learn? Who taught him? What does his experience teach us? These are timeless questions. These are the kinds of truths best delivered in a story, in a fable. And this book, I can't wait for you to see the new book.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  It's the first book we've ever fully self-published here at Daily Stoic. It's printed here in the United States. And each page features amazing illustrations done by my friend Victor Uhas, whose work you've probably seen in Rolling Stoic. And as a special bonus, if you order the book before March 9th, 2021, you'll get the audiobook for free as well. I've done a bunch of different versions of it. It's really great. We had some voiceover actors. I did it. We have a version with sound effects, a bunch of great stuff. Check it out at store.dailystoic.com or go to dailystoic.com/king. This is a timeless tale told for all ages. It makes a great gift. I can't wait for you to see it. I've spent so much time on this. The Boy Who Would Be King.

• 7:57Speaker 00

  You can preorder it now. dailystoic.com/king.