Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation

designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.

Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of

history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example,

and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

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Can you return with honor? All of them would have wanted to get home, to get free, to get safe.

There in that horrible, fetid prison camp, you'd think that those soldiers would have done anything

to leave.

But no, they insisted on conditions.

They held themselves to a standard.

Led by future Admiral James Stockdale, himself just recently steeped in stoic philosophy,

the prisoners of war in North Vietnam sought to conduct themselves with honor and insisted they would not

return home without it. So they resisted. They took care of each other. They suffered greatly

rather than cooperate with the enemy or criticize their own government. They would not accept

special treatment. They would not undermine each other. The idea again was to live, even in a prison,

even under torture, in such a way that when or if they did ever make it back, they could hold

their heads high. Now, hopefully we will never be subjected to such a thing. But each of us leaves

our house each day. Each of us is sent on missions. Each of us does our stint in this

situation or that one. The question is then, will we return with honor? Or will we be changed and

degraded by the circumstances, by our choices? Marcus Aurelius' famous line about striving not to be

stained purple was his own way of talking about returning with honor.

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