Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.

On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading

a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and

the art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman.

And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Mark

Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me.

And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

Are you in touch with your future?

As Gandhi sat with a reporter one hot afternoon, he began experiencing some stomach pains,

an attendant brought him a mud pack to place on his abdomen.

This puts me in touch with my future, he said, with a smile.

He was joking about his mortality, just as the Stoics and all wise philosophers have.

The reporter who was sitting there with him was a bit surprised.

You were so young, he said.

And that's when Gandhi reminded him, as Marcus Arrelius did in meditations that age didn't

matter.

Death was the common lot of all people, he said, some in a hundred years, but all sooner

or later, we'll die.

In meditations, Marcus spoke often of the emperors who preceded him, where it was Antoninus

or Hadrian, Vespassian, Rysk or Augustus, where it was Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.

They were all dead.

Some lived long lives, some lived short ones, but eventually they all went in the same

...