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Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation,

but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoke,

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.

Enjoy it while you have it. Don't miss it when you don't.

Do you know the fable of the Fox without a tale? It's one of Asop's best. In the story of Fox escapes a trap by chewing off its tail.

The Fox struggles to come to terms with his terrible loss, almost wishing he was dead than to be without his beautiful tail.

Finally, he tries to convince the other foxes that life is actually better without it.

You were less likely to get caught by a hound or a stuck in a trap he said, and hunters would have nothing to cut off, and on and on.

But one crafty fox saw the trick for what it was and said, you're only saying that because you've lost your tail.

That ever happens to us. We'd be wise to do the same, but in the meantime, we're going to enjoy what we have.

Asop lived many, many years ago, and it's possible that the moral of his fable made his way to the Stoics.

And it certainly seems like it did, because while the primary message of the story is about being careful to whom you listen to,

coming to terms with loss is also a big part of it.

Seneca, in his ninth letter to Lucilius, speaks quite eloquently about the kind of self-sufficiency Aestoeumus cultivate. If he loses a hand through disease or war, Seneca writes of the philosopher,

or if some accident puts out one or both of his eyes, he will be satisfied with what is left, taking as much pleasure in his impaired and maimed body as he took when it was sound.

This is partly what the fox and some of the cynics missed. It's not that your tail or money or an impressive title are to be scorned.

They should be enjoyed while you have them. It's that we have to understand that possessing is a fleeting thing, that it can all disappear in an instant.

We can prefer to have things while we have them, but the second we lose them, we just move on.

We don't need to fault others whose good fortune remains. We don't need to exaggerate or dilute ourselves about our loss.

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