There Is No Greatness Without This | The Portable Retreat

People probably thought Marcus Aurelius was strange. The time he spent alone in his room. The long walks he took by himself. We know they thought it was strange that he was seen reading and writing in the Colosseum, ignoring the carnage of the games below.“The world today does not understand, in either man or woman,” Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes in Gift from the Sea, “the need to be alone.” Perhaps we ourselves don’t understand it. We don’t quite see the point. Or as much as we enjoy it, we don’t see it as much of a priority. As we discussed over at Daily Dad in an email recently, parents will manage to make time for so many things…but quiet time by or for themselves is written off as an impossible indulgence.---And in today's Daily Stoic Journal reading, Ryan examines the importance of cultivating a safe and free place to retreat to inside of your own mind.✉️ 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, including the Stillness Key.📱 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.

• 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.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  There is no greatness without this. People probably thought Marcus Aurelius was strange, the time he spent alone in his room, the long walks he took by himself. We know they thought it was strange that he was seen reading and writing in the Colosseum, ignoring the carnage at the games below. The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes in "A Gift from the Sea", they do not understand the need to be alone. Perhaps we ourselves don't understand it. We don't quite see the point, or as much as we enjoy it, we don't see it as much of a priority. As I discussed over on the Daily Dad Podcast in an email recently, "Parents will manage to make time for so many things,

• 1:21Speaker 00

  but quiet time for and by themselves is written off as an impossible indulgence." But actually, Lindbergh writes, "These are among the most important times in one's life, when one is alone. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows that he must be alone to create, the writer to work out his thoughts, the musician to compose, the saint to pray. There would be no meditations without this quiet solitude, or more alarming, there would have been no Marcus Aurelius either. He had to take the time to retreat into his own soul, as he said, "to rejoice in perfect stillness." He needed to step away.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  He needed to evaluate and reflect, prepare and anticipate. He was an extremely busy man with endless amounts of demands on his person and his schedule, but he insisted on stillness because he knew it was the key to his health and happiness, and his leadership depended on it. And the same is true for you.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  That's my, uh, my keys. And, uh, the biggest one on the key ring, which I used to open my office not just a few minutes ago, is my Stillness is the Key. Key, a little on the nose, but I love it. Um, the Daily Stoic coins started as I wanted a little reminder for myself. My pockets are full, so I came up with this cool key. It's got this picture of a rock on it. As Marcus said, uh, be like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually the sea falls still around. To me, that's the image of stillness. That's what ataraxia is all about. Obviously, I wrote a book on it, which I'd love for you to read if you haven't. And then if you want to check out this key, it's pretty cool. I'll link to it in today's show notes, or you can also just go to dailystoic.com/stillnesskey and check that out.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  The Portable Retreat.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  It is in the future, on a vacation, on your day off. That's when we plan to get out into nature. We think there we'll find peace and release from the crush of the everyday demands of life. Yet this never seems to really happen as often as we think, does it? And when we do get that peace, it is difficult to keep it once we go back into the fray. So for a Stoic, all this is madness. The true retreat is to the freedom of our own mind and our own soul, to consider the gifts we already have that can be a refuge for all time, if we take the time daily to do so. That's from the Daily Stoic Weekly Meditation in the Daily Stoic Journal, which I hope you'll check out.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  We've got some quotes from Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus here to round it out. "People seek retreat for themselves in the country, by the sea, or in the mountains. You are very much in the habit of yearning for those same things. But this is entirely the trait of a base person, when you can at any moment find such a retreat in yourself. For nowhere can you find a more peaceful and less busy retreat than in your own soul, especially if on close inspection it is filled with ease, which I say is nothing more than being well ordered. Treat yourself often to this retreat and be renewed." Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 4.3.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Remember that it is not only the desire for wealth and position that debases and subjugates us, but also the desire for peace, leisure, travel, and learning. It doesn't matter what the external thing is. The value we place on it, subjugates us to another. Where our heart is set, there are impediment lies. That's Epictetus's Discourses 4.4. Remember that your ruling reason becomes unconquerable when it rallies and relies on itself, so that it won't do anything contrary to its own will, even if its position is irrational. How much more unconquerable if its judgments are careful and made rationally. Therefore, the mind free from passions is an impenetrable fortress, and a person has

• 5:28Speaker 00

  no more secure place of refuge for all time. That's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 8.48. You know, it must have been really hard to be Marcus. I mean, we, we think about, sometimes the American media teases presidents for how much they play golf, or, you know, jet off to Mar-a-Lago, or Camp David, or any of those sort of retreats. But the truth is, it must be extraordinarily hard to be the head of state. Endless meetings, endless responsibilities, endless criticism, endless pressure. You're trapped in this house. You live at the office, literally. And so leaders need escapes. They need hobbies.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Talk about this in Stillness is the Key, Churchill's, you know, hobby of, of bricklaying and painting. You know, Eisenhower plays golf. All that's important. But what Marcus Aurelius is saying is, and I think this is true for all of us, you're not actually able to get away from it all with a hobby, with a trip, with a vacation. And in fact, in my own experience, often I come back to the office from vacation more stressed out. You know, when I had, when I had Matt Berninger on the podcast from The National, we talked about how, you know, you think, hey, I'm going to take a couple of weeks vacation and relax, get down to a lower pace of life. Recharge, then when I come back, I'll be better. It probably took me like eight, nine months into the pandemic to really detox

• 6:54Speaker 00

  from the daily grind of work to adjust to a slower pace of life. So the idea that two weeks or a trip to the beach or a trip to the mountains, it's going to help you get away from it all. That a seven day meditation retreat is going to do it for you. It's not, it can help, but it's not a ma- there's no magical solution. There's no pill you can take. There's no trip you can take. There's no dark room in the back of your house you can go to. There's no beautiful landscaped backyard that will do it. No, you have to be able to turn inward. You have to be able to cultivate that peace in yourself. And, and that's better too. Don't you want it on demand? Vacations are expensive. You gotta get on planes or they can be blocked from a pandemic

• 7:36Speaker 00

  or, you know, scrutiny from a whatever. You know, you can't flee. Epicurus says every man flees himself. Emerson has a great essay on travel and he talks about how many of us bring ruins to the ruins we visit. No, you stay put, you do the internal work. You find the retreat, the refuge inside your own mind, inside your own soul, inside your own principles, inside your own meditation, inside your own journaling, inside the walk that you take, right? You gotta be able to find it and cultivate it on demand. Much better for you, I promise. Focus on that. Focus on cultivating the inward retreat as Marcus had to do.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  You never know, right? A pandemic, a war, things can block us from the trips, right? A travel delay, bad weather, things can prevent us from having that. But if we have it on the inside, you can feel at peace and serene even as you are sitting in the airport waiting for your delayed and delayed and delayed flight. That's what you want. You can have it even at court, as Marcus really said. You can have it even when you're president. Good systems, good internal discipline, good thoughts, a good soul. This is the best place of refuge and relaxation. So I hope you give yourself that gift and I hope you put in the work so you can have it when you need it.