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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom

designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life.

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

of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us dailystoic.com.

There is a balance to stoicism between awareness and anxiety. The stoics want you to be prepared

for an uncertain and often times dangerous future. But somehow, they don't want you to worry

about it. They want you to consider all the possibilities and not be stressed that many

of those possibilities will not be good. How exactly is that supposed to work? The answer

lies simply in the idea of presence. As Seneca writes, it is likely that some troubles will

befall us, but it is not a present fact. How often has the unexpected happened? How often

has the expected never come to pass? And even though it is ordained to be, what does it avail

to run out to meet your suffering? You will suffer soon enough when it arrives. It may

well reign tomorrow, but that doesn't mean you have to get wet in advance. You can enjoy

the sunshine today while still bringing in your furniture just in case. It's important

not to take the phrase pre-Meditatio Malorum, pre-meditation of evils to singularly. When

Seneca says that all the terms of the human lot should be before our eyes and then only

lists the bad things, he's accidentally doing that. Because of course, good stuff can happen

too. Bad stuff can also not happen. The point is that the future is out of our control.

It is uncertain and also vast. We have to be aware of that, yes, but we don't need to

suffer particularly not in advance. Because we have plenty of time to prepare and plenty

...