Where Are They Now? | Keep The Rhythm

Marcus Aurelius loved history and he loved literature. He loved reading about the courts of past emperors. He loved the plays of the great Romans and their poems. He loved the lectures of Epictetus, which had been given to him by his teacher Rusticus. Sometimes, as he pored over these pages, a thought struck him. Where are they now?✉️ 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.

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  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.

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  Where are they now?

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  Marcus Aurelius loved history, and he loved literature. He loved reading about the courts of past emperors. He loved the plays of great Romans and their poems. He loved the lectures of Epictetus, which had been given to him by his teacher, Rusticus. Sometimes, as he pored over these pages, a thought struck him: Where are they now? What happened to the advisors of Augustus, or the generals of Alexander, or Alexander himself? The answer was as obvious as it was inescapable, yet so easily ignored or denied by most of us in the course of our busy, daily existence. The band Death Cab for Cutie has a new verse about this. They sing, "In every movie I watched from the 50s,

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  there's only one thought that swirls around my head now." And that's the "everyone there on the screen." Yeah, "everyone there on the screen." Well, they're all dead now. They're all dead now. That's what Marcus tried to remember about the supposedly important or powerful people that he read about. They were all gone now, barely remembered. Their names were no longer familiar. Their statues were falling down. Their posthumous fame already expiring. Not that it did them any good. And he knew, and this was the important part, that the same thing was going to happen to him. "Everything is transitory," he wrote, "the knower and the known." What mattered then was the present moment and not much else.

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  What mattered was being good because it was good, not because it would make him famous, or wealthy, or more powerful. Memento mori. We are all mortal. Life is transitory in brief. It cannot be taken for granted. It cannot be delayed or deferred because we long for immortality or legacy, which, again, we cannot enjoy. They are all dead now. And someday, perhaps very soon, you will be laid alongside them, and all your plans and pretensions with you. Live and act accordingly.

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  Keep the rhythm. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. Marcus Aurelius must have known that as emperor, he was part of a grand and great

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  history. As a philosopher, he knew that all people are part of the rhythm pulsing through both history and their own lives. And he liked to remind himself not to lose that beat. "Return to your philosophy," he would tell himself when he drifted. "Don't give in to distractions." In fact, he tried constantly to return to it. That kind of awareness, that paying special attention, is something he learned reading from Epictetus. He told his students that while none of us can be perfect, we can catch ourselves when we begin to slide, when we drift from where we should be. So can you feel that rhythm this week? Can you point to examples when you really feel locked into it?

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  And we have two quotes from Marcus and one from Epictetus. Walk the long gallery of the past, of empires, of kingdoms succeeding each other without number. You can also see the future, for surely it will be exactly the same, unable to deviate from the present rhythm. It's all one, whether we've experienced 40 years or an eon. What more is there to see? That's Meditation 749. And then Meditation 611, he says, "When, forced as it seems by circumstances, into utter confusion, get a hold of yourself quickly. Don't be locked out of the rhythm any longer than necessary. You'll be able to keep the beat if you are constantly returning to it."

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  And then Epictetus's Discourses 412, he says, "When you let your attention slide for a bit, don't think you will get back a grip on it whenever you wish. Instead, bear in mind that perhaps because of today's mistake, everything that follows will be necessarily worse." Is it possible to be free of air? No, not by any means. But it is possible for a person to always be stretching to avoid air. And we must be content to at least escape a few mistakes by never letting our attention slide." There was something I was just thinking about as I read this to you. Let me look it up. I was thinking about this, and I remember I wrote an article, wrote a blog post, I'm looking at this. This is March 4, 2012.

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  So this is before, this is, this is, trust me, I'm lying, it's mostly written, but it's not out. I've moved to New Orleans. I'm transitioning towards this sort of different life. And anyways, I wrote a blog post on my site called "Return to Philosophy," and I'll read it to you. I have written this post before, but it remains a common theme. The busier we get, the more we work and learn and read, the further we drift. We get in a rhythm. We're making money, being creative, we're stimulated and busy. And it seems like everything is going well, but we drift further and further from philosophy. So we must catch ourselves and return to it. Pick up Meditations, Seneca, Plutarch, Hadeau, our note cards of quotes and reminders, anything.

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  From the shelf of great books, stop and evaluate. Read something that challenges, that informs. No matter how much learning or work or thinking we do, none of it matters unless it happens against the backdrop of exhortative analysis, the kind rooted in the deep study of the mind and emotion and demands that we hold ourselves to certain standards. We must turn to the practical, to the spiritual exercises of great men and actively use them. It's the only way we'll get anything out of the rest of our efforts. It's simple. Stop learning or working for a second and refine. Put aside all the momentum and the moment. Tap the brakes.

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  Return to philosophy. And then I found the other post, which is, wow, dated December 22nd, 2009. So wow, I guess I'm 22. And I wrote, lately I have felt off. As I felt down, it occurred to me how long it had been since I sat down and read philosophy. I knew I should fix this, but I didn't. A new book would come and I'd immediately pick it up. I think I've spent so little time reading now, it would be a shame to sit down with something I've read before. But this was a sham. What I was doing was distracting myself. It's what Steven Pressfield calls the resistance. I made myself busy so that I would have no chance

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  to feel better. And I knew that philosophy requires work and self criticism and one inevitable conclusion, that my problems were almost entirely my own fault. Their resolution requires an active process that only I can initiate. Philosophy is the tool with which to do so. As one would say, and I think this is Marcus Aurelius I'm quoting, doctors carry their tools on their person. Or more ideally, a boxer's tools are their person. We should seek to do the same. There is no excuse for being too busy or too distracted, nor is there any alternative.

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  So anyways, if you feel like you're slipping a little bit, know that I do that too, and I have now for well over a decade and a half. And you just pick yourself back up. You go back to the rhythm, as Marcus Aurelius says. You pick up your philosophy, you return to it, and you keep going. So I'll leave you there, and I hope you pick up the rhythm this week. And I'll talk to you soon.

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  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.