This Is Worse Than Death | The Philosopher’s School Is A Hospital

Ryan explains why the Stoics have always given their lives for what they believe in, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow 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.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Bienvenidos a otro episodio del Podcast Daily Stoic. El jueves hacemos doble trabajo, no solo leyendo nuestra meditación diaria, sino también leyendo un pasaje del libro "El Daily Stoic", "366 Meditaciones sobre la Wisdom, la Perseverancia y la Art of Living", que escribí con mi maravillosa coautora y colaborador, Stephen Hanselman. Y así hoy os daremos una rápida meditación de uno de los estoicos, de Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, luego mi análisis y luego os enviamos al mundo a hacer lo mejor posible para convertir estas palabras en obras.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Esto es peor que la muerte. Hay cosas que tememos que deberíamos, y hay cosas que deberíamos temer pero no. La mayoría de la gente teme morir. La mayoría de la gente no teme, no se preocupa que estén viviendo una especie de muerte. Agrippinus, uno de los grandes estoicos de la época de Nero, se negó a comprometer sus creencias o mantener un bajo perfil, aunque lo puso en peligro de correr mal por ese tirano. Quería ser el繫 purple, como hemos hablado, incluso si era más seguro ser negro, blanco o gris. Hubiera gustado las letras de esa gran canción de Alice en la cadena, la que dice: "Si no puedo ser mi propio, me sentiría mejor muerto". De hecho, finalmente murió por ello, como su padre incorruptible lo había antes.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Hay cosas en esta vida peores que la muerte. Vivir una vida de pobreza y corrompida es una de ellas. Ser un paseo o un asiento, un encargado de vici, o un miembro despierto de la mafia es una de ellas. Tienes que repetir eso en tu cabeza una y otra vez. Tienes que luchar, tienes que luchar. No quieres ser como ese persona despierta, sin nombre que Seneca mencionó. Se trató de una retort de sufrimiento. Estás pidiendo tu vida, pero, ¿cómo es la forma en que estás viviendo diferente de estar muerto? Si no puedes ser tu propio, si se niegas a ser tu propio, ¿cuál es el punto? La pregunta es retórica. Puedes ser tu propio, así que elige serlo y no comprometes o se sientas con aquellos que te quieren molestar en algo diferente.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Y si quieres saber más sobre Agrippinus, creo que es uno de los estoicos más fascinantes que hay. Profiliamos a él en el nuevo libro "Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Xeno to Marcus Aurelius", que está ahora. La gente lo está amando. Visita donde sea que se vendan los libros.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  The philosopher's school is a hospital. Men, the philosopher's lecture hall is a hospital. You shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure but pain, for you aren't well when you enter it. That's from Epictetus's Discourses, and today's little riffing is from The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, from yours truly, Ryan Holiday and my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can pick up a copy of The Daily Stoic anywhere you buy books, over a million copies in print now. And we also have signed copies in the Daily Stoic store and our limited edition leather bound edition, which I hope you check out. But let's talk about this quote from Epictetus here.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  Have you ever been to physical therapy or rehab? No matter what the name implies, or however many people you see lying around getting massages, it's not a fun place to be. Turns out that healing hurts. The trained experts know exactly where to exert pressure and what to subject to stress so that they can strengthen where the patient is weak and help stimulate the areas that have atrophied. Stoic philosophy is a lot like that. Some observations and exercises will touch you on your pressure points. It's nothing personal, it's supposed to hurt. And that's how you develop the will to endure and persevere through life's many challenges. I remember I was in high school, and I was always a runner, so I wasn't in bad shape, I was in good shape, but I'd basically done no strength training ever in my life.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  And I was snowboarding one winter, and I ended up hurting myself in some accident. I took this sort of jump on a back country hill and ended up sort of rolling over on my head, and I tweaked a vertebrae in my back, or I don't remember. But I ended up going to physical therapy for it. And exactly as I'm saying in this entry, you sort of expect like it's going to be cool massages, or rehab, or I don't know, some hot tub or something, jets of water working on you. I got there. And they were like, oh, you just need to do a bunch of sit ups. And that's what I had to do for like several weeks of returning is they basically put me on a regimen of doing sit ups and other ab work.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  They were like, the reason your back is hurt is because it's not supported buttressed enough by muscles in the front. And I was like, well, this sucks, but that's what I had to do. And I feel like life is a lot like that. You know, you go, you want a magical solution. You want someone to do X, Y, or Z for you. You go to a financial planner and you want them to tell you, here's the magical things I can do that will make you more money. And in fact, they go, here's where you're spending too much money. Here's where you're not being smart enough with your investments. Here's where you're not being patient enough. Do all these things and check in with me in 30 years and you'll be good. Right? That's how it is.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  We want a shortcut and there is no shortcut except for the work. And the work is not usually fun because if it was fun, they wouldn't call it work. They'd call it fun.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Right? When you read Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or Seneca, you're like, man, I feel attacked. Why'd you have to do me like that, Marcus? Why'd you have to do me like that, Epictetus? It's because they know, they know where you're sick and we're all sick and we're all weaker than we should be. We've let muscles atrophy. We were hoping for a shortcut. We were hoping someone would take care of it for us. And they can't. You gotta do the work.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  And probably the first part of the work is accepting where you are not well. So I love this idea of the philosopher's lecture halls, a hospital. And I see this, you know, on the Daily Stoic socials. People are like, you know, why, why, why are there not more quotes about love or happiness or fun? Or why is this serious? Why'd you have to go and get political? This isn't supposed to touch you in your happy place all the time. This isn't supposed to tell you what you want to hear. I wouldn't be doing my job if you didn't sometimes feel attacked by what I said. If you didn't disagree sometimes with what I said. If what I said didn't imply something that challenged you or even offended you. So remember that this is supposed to be hard.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  And it's hard because it's touching you somewhere where you're soft, where you haven't done the work. And hopefully by feeling that it'll spur you to get where you need to go. Or at least in. Dealing with the challenge, you will better understand why you've chosen to do or say the things you've chosen to do. So with that, we'll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.