NOTED
If I had a bucket list it would include a visit to The Painted Porch Bookshop in Bastrop, Texas. Ryan Holiday and his wife, Samantha, opened their bookstore in the middle of the COVID epidemic! A very bold move with an unusual philosophy of dealing with a “select” list of books. So far it’s working. Of course, Ryan’s published titles are available along with hundreds of books that would support his huge work in guiding thousands of Stoics around the world. Daily Stoic, an email to over 750,000 readers, has been the main guide to my Stoic practice, alongside The Daily Stoic, 366 days of meditations on Stoic insights and exercises. Below you will find a recent email — a sample of Ryan’s work.
Quote
When you consider the insane amounts of money that some people feel the need to accumulate, when you see their estates, when you see them pinch every penny, what they’ll do for a dollar, when you reckon with the costs—to family and friends—it took to earn all this, you might assume they get to take it all with them when they die.
Of course, we don’t. The Roman poet Juvenal joked that while Alexander was living, the whole world could not contain him, but in death, a coffin was sufficient. The humbling wisdom of this joke is one we ought to remember too, as we save ‘for retirement,’ as we ‘invest for the future,’ as we ‘build our legacy.’
It’s very cheap to be dead.
You won’t need any of this when you’re gone. You won’t be able to appreciate your posthumous fame, as Marcus Aurelius pointed out, just as you won’t be able to reap the appreciation of your investments. Your legacy, your intellectual property rights, your real property—all of it will become utterly irrelevant to you one day soon. All of it will become completely worthless…not objectively but subjectively.
Can you let that sink in? Can you make better—more temperate, moderate—decisions today in light of it?
Here is another sample from Ryan:
He was seriously ill, plagued by a chronic stomach condition painful enough to require occasional doses of opium. Then you know, he lived through an actual plague that lasted for more than a decade. He buried children. He worked in the snake pit that was Rome’s court. He saw war and decay and corruption.
What did he cling to? In sickness and in health, prosperity and problems? Marcus Aurelius relied on philosophy, on Stoicism, which he had been introduced to as a young man. All his life he felt a debt of gratitude to his teacher, Rusticus, who loaned him his personal copy of Epictetus.
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes that a person should “never let go of philosophy, no matter what happens.” Elsewhere, he refers to it as a soothing ointment, akin to the medical treatments he received, something that relieved pain and healed wounds. That’s what philosophy was in the ancient world—not some academic exercise, not “bandy[ing] words with crackpots and philistines,” as Marcus himself put it in that same passage.
None of us know what the future holds. None of us know what adversity and difficulty tomorrow, let alone the next 10 years, might bring. What we do know, what we can be sure of, is that philosophy can guide us through it. Stoicism can help us, support us, offer counsel, advice, strength, clarity and purpose.
We should not only not let it go, we should dive deep into it.
Reflection
I delight in Ryan’s youthful enthusiasm and commitment to Stoicism. From an 80 year old’s perspective, Ryan is youthful. He comes to us from the The Daily Stoic quoted above and he is very alive with a Daily Stoic podcast and the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel.
Frequently a participant in an international online Stoic program will state that their introduction to Stoicism came from reading a Ryan Holiday book. He publishes about one book a year. Here are some titles to pursue: The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, Stillness is the Key, Lives of the Stoics, and Discipline is Destiny.
My take on learning about many Stoic leaders is that there is an approach and style for everyone. Literally, nearly a million people have found that Ryan’s take on Stoicism really fits their needs; I will call it the energized, rubber meets the road, approach.
Resources and Events
https://dailystoic.com
https://dailystoic.com/podcast/
https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic
https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ Bookshop
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