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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,

365 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Steven Hanselman.

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

Do you have a heart for any fate? Yesterday is done, so there's no worry there. But today, tomorrow, what will it bring?

No one can say. Certainly no one can honestly promise you that it will be easy. And would you even listen to them if they did?

After a year that's brought a pandemic, a recession, an impeachment, hurricanes, and floods, and fires, and murder hornets, and so much else.

The Stoics would say that there is no hope of taking the teeth out of this world. All we can do is toughen ourselves up.

All we can do is be prepared. All we can do is our best. Let us then be up and doing, long fellow,

wrote with a heart for any fate, still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor, and to wait. This, this is the Stoic prescription.

Seneca said that fortune behaves as she pleases. Marcus Aurelius said that they will come at us with knives and jeers. But whatever, we will face it boldly and bravely.

We will be ready for anything. We will labor. We will wait months in quarantine if we have to. We will keep achieving. We will be up and doing. We will never stop pursuing.

Because the world cannot break us. The world cannot deter us. It can alter our places. Sure, it can knock us down. But we can get back up.

We can be stronger in the broken places. We will keep being good, no matter what other people say and do. We will greet it all with a smile.

We will love every second of it.

Don't look for the third thing. The Stoic's teaches that doing well is its own reward. To do the right thing, to see someone helped by it, this is enough.

To go around expecting thanks. What Marcus Aurelius describes is the third thing. That is to miss the point. It's being greedy.

Keeping score not only misses the purposes of being good, it's foolish. It sets you up for disappointment. If you are going to do some accounting, look at it from the other direction.

How many people have helped us? What do we owe them in return? Think about clearing some debts this week and consider forgetting any notion of others.

This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoke Journal. 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living, but together by myself.

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