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.

For more, visit Dailystoic.com.

Didn't they know better? They knew what was important. They had been tutored from an early age in history and the literature that showed them all the cautionary tales. They knew the perils

of ambition. They knew the cost of ego. They knew that happiness was never about

externals. They knew that they wouldn't be able to take any of it with them when they died. They knew

it was all shadows and dust. Yet they did chase it, didn't they? Seneca piled up a huge fortune.

He compromised himself to stay at the center

of Nero's court. Cato, for all his principles, pulled some real creepy shenanigans with his

marriage to keep his career going. Marcus Aurelius, as we said, wrote that he would have traded

all the palaces and power of Rome for more time with his family. But he didn't actually do it,

did he? We all know better. We know what happened to Alexander the Great. We know all the

stories about the miserable billionaires, the insecure power brokers, the insatiable art monsters.

We know where it got them. Nowhere. Yet here we are following in their footsteps,

nevertheless. Here we are telling ourselves that we just need to do a little more, just one more job,

just one more term. We are like Odysseus in Tennyson's tragic poem, made weak by time and fate,

but strong in will, to strive, to seek,

to find, and not to yield. And this is tragic, to never feel like we have enough, to never be able to stop, to chase the wrong things. This is folly. It is the sirens on the rocks, singing, no, it will be different

for you. You'll actually get it. You'll be the exception. You'll be happy. We know better.

...