the world is better for you being in it you have so much to offer and give your duty asks a lot of you if you're coming to stoicism thinking that it's telling you that nothing matters and that people suck you're getting it wrong Marcus aelius and the rest of the stoics who were not that dissimilar are obviously depressed and dark right I say no my argument is that if that's your perception of stoicism you are missing the whole philosophy first off let's just look at Marcus's life it was dark this is a guy who buries
multiple children this is a guy who experiences a plague and War and health issues it was one disaster after another and yet Marcus Aurelius persevered through it I I'll give you my my favorite passage in meditation in book five Mark says at dawn when you have trouble getting out of bed tell yourself I have to go to work as a human being what do I have to complain of if I'm going to go do what I was born for the things I was brought into this world to do I wasn't put here to huddle under
the covers and be warm he writes don't you see the plants and the birds and the Ants and the spiders all going about their individual tasks putting the world in order as best they can he chides himself for not loving himself enough he says you got to love your nature too and what it demands of you he says you have to help people he clearly cherished the people around him him and what did he learn from them he learned to take care of himself he learned to enjoy the good things in life he learned to
be of service to others and he learned most of all the importance and the power of love and kindness and compassion this is hardly the emotionless dark depressing philosophy that stoicism is made out to be it in fact it's the opposite of that in almost every way something like 80 times in meditations Marcus real talks about serving the common good he's saying stop thinking about your own problems stop thinking about what you're going through stop focusing on yourself he says don't even be overheard complaining to yourself think about what your duty and your obligations to
others are which is one of the best ways to get out of your own head and to stop obsessing about your problems this sort of woe is me one of the ways we get out of that is one by taking the the big picture of you but two by focusing on someone else's problems so much of our modern understanding of happiness is inseparable from pleasure from things being the way we want them to be going the way we want them to be I think Marcus Reus and the stoics would have seen happiness as something closer
to how Aristotle saw it as a as human flourishing as eliminating the things that cause unhappiness right selfishness uh irresponsibility recklessness ill discipline the stoics understood as as Victor Frankle said that happiness isn't something you pursue it's something that ensues so Mark cus was able to find happiness despite what was happening around him because he said look it's always there it's inside you right it's there you he says there's this bubble of goodness inside each of us that's bubbling up was it always wonderful and amazing no because life is not always wonderful and amazing it's
not always going to go the way that you want it to go it just isn't if we only saw what was awful if we only saw the worst in people if we were delusional and naive and we expected everything to be wonderful and amazing all the time we're going to get our asses kicked but if our glasses were negative if our tint on everything was negative and terrible well then things were going to be terrible and negative Marcus Aus believed that our life was dyed by the color of our thoughts so part of this core
exercise of stoicism understanding that you have different handles that you can grab things on as epic tius said allows you to see the good in a situation versus the bad in a situation right it allows you to see what you can do here it allows you to see what you get to do here and in many ways this is probably why Marcus cus is writing meditations to begin with he's trying to cope with the fact that things aren't easy that things aren't going the way that he wanted them to be that that life is tough
that suffering is inevitable but the degree to which he suffers and what he suffers over that's a choice he has and so the stoic practice of journaling like we should understand that that Marcus is turning to the pages in meditations for help so that he doesn't give in to the darkness so that he keeps going so that he can see a different lens stoicism was in the ancient world an exercise a practice it's not just this thing you knew about that you learned in class it was a a thing you were engaging in if your
version of stoicism is you stuff it all down you pretend it doesn't exist you tell yourself you're invulnerable and Invincible when life does overwhelm you you're going to feel that very deeply and by the way mark wasn't afraid to ask for help either that's one of my favorite passages in meditations he says you're like a soldier storming a wall so what if you have to reach up and ask a comrade for help that's where today's sponsor comes in better help you can go to their site right now you can use my link betterhelp.com stoic you
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first month don't be afraid to ask for help so what if you need help Marcus aelius needed it too I've needed it I'm sure you might as well that's betterhelp.com daily stoic so let's go to that somewhat controversial example it that sometimes people hold up as proof that the STS were dark and depressive Marx R opens meditations he says when you awake in the morning tell yourself that the people I deal with today will be meddling and ungrateful and arrogant and dishonest and jealous and Surly so yeah on the one hand it feels like Marcus
is just listing how life sucks and I think we've all woken up and just thought is this what I'm going to have to deal with with today but Marcus isn't saying like don't get out of bed cuz people suck no he's saying look this is how people are going to be so first off let's not be surprised by it but Marcus is trying to remind himself why he says look they don't know any better he says I can't let them implicate me in their ugliness I can't let them drag me down and he said I
can't forget why I'm here why they're here we're all meant to work together we're all doing this together and he's trying to work himself up and through this so again what seems like a dark passage in meditations is actually a pretty cheerful one but most of all Marcus Aurelius Drew on stoicism to get through all this difficulty he said it's disgraceful for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong actually stoicism is this empowering philosophy it's a joyful philosophy it's a encouraging philosophy it's a philosophy that believes in your agency and
your worth and your meaning and it believes that you can make a difference maybe I'll leave you with this quote at the back of meditations cuz I think to me it describes Marcus reis's realistic view of why he was here and what a good life was he said concentrate on what you have to do fix your eyes on it remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being remind yourself what nature demands of people then do it without hesitation and speak the truth as you see it but with kindness with humility without
hypocrisy see every day totally free we send out the daily stoic email it's the largest community of stoics ever assembled in human history and just one stoic idea one ancient lesson to chew on every single day I'd love to have you join us if you like our videos I think you'll like the email it's also a podcast version of it too you can sign up at Daily stoic.com [Music]
