Why Do It Alone? | Marcus Aurelius Advice For Becoming Unstoppable

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• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  Why do it alone? You could do it on your own, you could wing it, you could hope to stumble through and come out the other side with a comprehensive understanding of a book that, while pretty short and to the point, is still, as we said earlier this week, pretty difficult. Marcus Rilis, the author of that book we're talking about, Meditations, would steer you in a different direction, though. "Mastery of reading and writing requires a master," he said, and he knew this from experience. Sometime around the year 140 AD, Marcus was introduced to the philosophy that would change his life by his teacher Rusticus. "The remembrances of Epictetus," as Marcus would refer most gratefully to that book that Rusticus gave him, he said, "which he supplied to me out of his own library."

• 1:14Speaker 00

  We can imagine the underlinings in Rusticus's copy that would have called Marcus's attention to particularly important passages. We can imagine the marginalia that would have provided valuable context and insights. We can imagine the discussions the two might have had as Marcus was familiarizing himself with this wisdom. In fact, Marcus would write in Meditations about going straight to the seat of intelligence. By that, he meant asking questions, hearing from the experts, really wrestling with ancient wisdom as it was meant to be wrestled with. So if we're going to sit down and read Marcus Rilis's Meditations today, why wouldn't we do the same? For the past decade here at Daily Stoic, we've been engaging with Meditations day in and day out, wanting to understand its wisdom so we can apply it to our own lives.

• 1:58Speaker 00

  We've spent hundreds and thousands of hours with the book itself, and spent just as many hours hunting down papers and analysis by scholars and historians and translators, many of whom we've gotten to talk to and interview. It's been the work of a lifetime, exploring the depths of Meditations, making sense of what Marcus wrote and what those writings can do for us. And as Marcus said, "It requires the help of a master." Well, our new guide, "How to Read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations", is designed to be just that. It's like a book club in a box for a great book. It's intended to be what those scholars and historians and translators have been for the Daily Stoic team and for me personally. It's something we've worked really hard on. I'm really proud of it. I think it's going to be great.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Just as Risticus provided Marcus with a well-worn copy of Epictetus's teachings, complete with some of his notes and insights. That's what we're doing here. It's all my best thinking on Meditations in one place. It's videos, it's podcasts, it's stuff from me. I think you're really going to like it. It's for sale right now in the Daily Stoic store. I'll link to that in today's show notes. And I hope you check it out. If you haven't gotten a copy of Meditations, well, why not do that also? I love the Gregory Hays translations, which we sell too. And you can get the course and the book together in a package as well. I'll link to that in today's show notes. I think this is awesome, and I hope you like it.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  In the year 170, Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of the Roman Empire, sat down to write, not to an audience or for publication, but to himself, for himself. And what he wrote is undoubtedly one of history's most effective formulas for overcoming every negative situation we may encounter in life. As Marcus wrote, "Our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions, because we can accommodate and adapt." And then he concluded with powerful words destined for maxim, "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

• 4:09Speaker 01

  In Marcus's words are the secrets to an art known as turning obstacles upside down. To act with a reverse clause, so there's always a way out or another route to get where you need to go, so that setbacks or problems are always expected and never permanent. Making certain that what impedes us can empower us. Coming from this particular man, these were not idle words. In his own reign of some 19 years, he would experience nearly constant war, a horrific plague, an attempt at the throne by one of his closest allies, repeated an arduous travel across the empire, a rapidly depleting treasury, and on and on and on. We are the rightful heirs to this tradition.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  It's our birthright. Whatever we face, we have a choice. Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them? We might not be emperors, but the world is still constantly testing us. It asks, are you worthy? Can you get past the things that will inevitably fall in your way? Will you stand up and show us what you're made of?