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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a

meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life.

And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful.

With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives.

But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

You just had a scare. We can think about what would change if we found out we had cancer. We can think about what it would be like to see one of our kids in the hospital with tubes coming out of their nose.

We can think about the anguish of waiting to hear from the authorities, was our spouse involved in that car crash.

Or we can imagine what we'd be thinking in those moments when the news was finally delivered, our hopes, our life flashing before us, the prayers, the promises, the bucket list of everything we do if we could just get through this okay.

And it's important for you to realize that this exercise, this Stoic practice of memento-mori, it is not just hypothetical, not anymore anyway.

You just lived through a year-long version of it. You're living through it right now.

There is a deadly pandemic floating in the air, accumulating in the invisible aerosol particles that have claimed the lives of millions.

It's been in rooms you have been in. It's been inhaled by people you have passed on the street just as they've exiled.

It's been incubated in and transmitted from people you've hugged, people you've served as part of your job. Maybe it's even been inside you. Maybe you got COVID, a serious case or a mild one.

Everyone reading this, everyone listening to this, however, has something in common. You survived. Maybe you were aware of how close you came. Maybe you had no idea. Maybe you refused to see it.

It's true though, you dodged death. We all did. Do not ignore this brush with mortality. Think on it. Instead, learn from it. Let it sober you up.

Keep those promises you would have made had the direness of the situation been clearer or closer to you. Change because of this.

As Marcus Aurelius said to himself during the playing that dominated his own time, imagine that you nearly died because it's true. Now take what's left of your life and live it properly.

This momentum or anything we talk about and we've been talking about it for years. Again, it's not theoretical. We just went through it. You just vividly saw how life can change in an instant.

How time can be taken from us. How easily it could have been 10, 100, 1000 times worse. As it was for Marcus Aurelius in the Antonin play, which many people think he ultimately succumbed to.

This idea of momentum or I'm holding my momentum or coin right now, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. This is what stoicism is about. Look, there's even a book, an edition of Seneca's writings called How to Die.

This stuff is real. Take it seriously if you want to remind or go to store.dailystoke.com. But just write it down on a piece of paper. I don't care. The point is, momentum or you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. Ignore that at your peril.

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