This Is The Only Thing You Get to Choose | There Is Philosophy In Everything

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

After everything that happened in the last few years were tired. After everything that's happened in your life, after everything that's gone wrong in the last couple weeks, you think to yourself, "I can't handle one more thing going wrong." Certainly, Mark is really sort of related to that sentiment, floods and plagues and wars.

A troubled sun, personal health issues, haven't I given enough? We have Mark's really say in a recent Daily Stoic video. The thing is, life doesn't care, has no time for your questions, pays no mind to your limits. I don't think I'm up for this. The novelist John Gregory Dunn said to his wife as they left the hospital after rushing

him to check on their daughter, who had just been admitted, was down about his career. He wasn't feeling great about his own health. He was sick about his only child. He was worried it would be a long and hard road ahead for them. Joan did in his Steely Stoic wife responded with something we can imagine Mark is

a really reminding himself of in meditations. You don't get a choice, she says. Fortune behaves as she pleases, the Stoic said, "Life disposes, it decides.

“The only thing we get a choice in is how we respond."”

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Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stroke Podcast. There is philosophy and everything. This is the March 24th entry in the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on wisdom, perseverance in the art of living, holding a hard cover here, maybe you like audiobooks, you want to listen to the audiobook, you can grab the leather band edition in the Daily Stoic store, you

can grab any book if you want. But today's quote is from Epictetus and Discourses, we have our streak of many marks, realist entries in a row.

“And now I think we're on an equally long Epictetus streak.”

Epictetus says eat like a human being, drink like a human being, dress up, marry, have children

or companions, show us these things so that we can see that you truly have learned from the philosophers. Epictetus is Discourses 321, Plutarch a Roman biographer as well as an admirer of the

Stoics, although not always yet as disagreements, he didn't begin his study of the

grades of Roman literature until late in life, but as he recounts in his biography of Demosthenes, he was surprised at how quickly it all came at him. He wrote, "It wasn't so much the words that brought me into a full understanding of events as that somehow I had a personal experience of the events that allowed me to follow closely the meaning of the words."

This is what Epictetus means about the study of philosophy study, yes, but totally of your life as well.

“It's the only way that you actually understand what any of it means.”

More importantly, it's only from your actions and choices over time that it will be possible to see whether you took any of the teachings to heart.

Be aware of that today when you're going to work, going on a date, deciding whom to vote

for, calling your parents and even waving to your neighbor as you walk to your door, tip in the delivery man, saying goodnight to someone you love, all of that is philosophy. All of it is experience that brings meaning to the words. You know, there's another quote from Plutarch, he was talking about Socrates and he said, "You know, Socrates didn't teach as he sat down at his desk and lectured as students

he taught and how he lived his life, how he served in the army, how he walked through the marketplace, how he talked to his wife, how he talked to his children. He taught as students he said, as he drank the hemlock and died." Socrates was talking about his philosophy. He was, as Epictetus said, embodying his philosophy.

And then talk about it, he was about it, right, don't talk about it, be about it.

“But what I like from this, what I think is important, that we realize with the stillics,”

is that the philosophers weren't these kind of, you know, abstract theoretical people. The stillics were living their lives. They were engaged in the world. They weren't philosophers writing their works. They were philosophers in, how they read their kids, how they dealt with being tired

from a long dusty day of travel. They were philosophers in disputes, philosophers when they were sick, philosophers visiting their family over the holidays, right, philosophy was something you applied to life. But not in the big, magnificent heroic moments, but the regular, the ordinary, the simplest human moments, and that this is what really tests us.

This is what really challenges us. But this is also the opportunity, you know, on Marx really says the obstacles the way. He isn't actually talking about major crises. He's talking about not just people who are getting in our way. There's another great quote.

Forgetting, who said it's something like, anyone can be created a crisis. It takes power and strength and fortitude to be resilient and philosophical in the ordinary, every dayness of life. That's the challenge.

“That's why I call it the daily, stoic, something you apply every day in big situations.”

And little ones are like ordinary and extraordinary as a family member, as a friend, as a spouse, as a parent, as an academic, as a mechanic, as Emperor, as a slave. That's what stoicism is really about. And I think it's a, it's a worthy reminder. I think it's such a wonderful, cool thing to think of that, that idea from Epitetus, making

its way to Marcus really is, and then him having to put it in practice. How different all their lives were. Anyways, that's my stoic message for today. I'll leave you there and talk to you all very soon. Hey, it's Ryan.

Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say, we so appreciate it. We love serving you.

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