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. Failure doesn't define you, and neither does success. Of course, he was disappointed. It had been a long and hard fall. He descended from West Point to second lieutenant during the Mexican-American War, but now Ulysses S. Grant was selling

firewood by the side of the road. He must have hoped that no one would recognize him and his

heart would have sank when Simon Buckner and old school and war buddy did. Could God, Grant,

he burst. What are you doing? But Grant decided he would not be ashamed. I am solving the problem of

poverty, he replied. Grant knew what the Stoics knew, that outside circumstances don't say anything

about us at all, that it didn't matter, as Epictetus said, what we bear, only how we bear it.

Grant was feeding his family.

He was doing honest work.

What was so bad about that?

After all, Cleanthes was a lowly water carrier in Athens and proud of it.

Now, had Grant been caught stealing to support his drinking habit, that would have been

different.

Or if he'd accepted a Confederate commission because the pay was better. Again, that would have been different. Or if he'd accepted a Confederate commission

because the pay was better. Again, that would be different. As I talked about in my episode

with Ron Chernow on the Daily Stoke podcast, who wrote one of his best biographies about Grant,

Grant understood this so-called menial work of selling firewood, didn't say anything about him. What he cared about was

making an honest living and providing for his family. The position didn't define him, and not

...