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Saturday, December 10, 2022
Your Saturday Stoic Review — Week of December 5 - 11
To give the gift of Stoicism to your friends and family, check out our 2022 Daily Stoic Gift Guide! This year's guide features the Page-A-Day Desk Calendar, a bundle of books signed by Ryan Holiday, and our beautiful Four Virtues Pendant. Click here to explore the full Gift Guide. *Shipping deadline for domestic holiday delivery is Thursday Dec 15.
PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
And so it goes for you and whatever interminable period lays ahead. It's not good or bad, it's an experience. What will you make of it? Will you be in it? That's what counts. That's what matters. That is what you control.
In one of the most watched videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel this week, Ryan Holiday shares 100 things he's learned from the book he's read over 100 times: Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Ryan has put so many miles on various paperback and hardcover copies of Meditations that most of his copies are now held together by tape. So he decided to create a leather edition to stand the test of time (check it out here), which is one of the lessons from Marcus himself:
In Meditations, Marcus says 'to read attentively—don't be satisfied with just getting gist of it.' Meditations is a book you return to over and over again. It has to be a daily practice, an ongoing practice, something you return to over and over and over again.
In one of the most listened to episodes of the Daily Stoic podcast this week, Ryan Holiday speaks to Roman historian Josiah Osgood about his new book Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato's Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic, the complicated legacy of Cato, what today's leaders can learn from the Shakespearean virtues and vices of both Cato and Caesar, and the Stoic lesson embedded in Cato and Caesar's fatal showdown:
"There's no one that the story ends well for. Not Caesar. Not Cato. Not Pompey. Not Rome. It doesn't go well for anyone. The question then is which of the strategies is intrinsically the right one? It's probably Cato—being a good person because it's the right thing. You may not come out victorious in the end, but at least you know you did what was right. That's probably the ultimate Stoic argument there: the right cause may ultimately be defeated but there's still nothing better than that. There comes a point where your integrity is all you have."
"'Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.' He raised his hand and pointed. 'If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.' Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed in another direction. 'Or you can go that way and you can do something- something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?'"
Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life.
In the kitchen at Per Se, one of the best restaurants in the world, there is a sign. All it says is: A Sense of Urgency. That's what a great chef, a great service staff, a great organization has. A great person needs it too.
Yet far too many of us lack this. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius chides himself for acting as if he's going to live forever, as if he has unlimited time. "You could be good today," he writes, "instead you choose tomorrow." He tells himself he needs to concentrate like a Roman and do the task in front of him as if it was the last thing he was doing in his life.
In short, he needs to attack everything with a sense of urgency. We all do.
(For more Stoic reminders to start your day with, watch this video!)
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