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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.

Freedom to do what?

Yesterday was July 4th, which, as most of you know, is a day that marks the celebration of the Declaration of Independence for the newly formed United States.

That idea of freedom is an important one, and there's no question that the founding of America was a step forward in the March for Freedom across the world, though by no means a complete one.

But it's worth taking a minute today, the day after the festivities and celebrations to reflect freedom to do what? Independence from what?

We live in a time of unprecedented prosperity, old constraints, religious, social, political, have broken down, mostly for the better.

Yet so many people are miserable. So many people are imprisoned in lives of excess, meaninglessness, and stress. We struggle with attention between what we can do and what we should do.

This is, in fact, a timeless struggle. Anyone who has read Thomas Rick's wonderful book, First Principles, or listened to my great interview with him here on the Daily Stoke Podcast,

you know that the philosophically inspired founders believed very deeply that liberty from the state was always intended to be checked by private virtue.

What stoicism is, properly understood, is a voluntary system of self-restraint, a framework for unsolicited courage, self-directed education, and uncoerced commitment to treat others well.

And this is most necessary in a society where one has the choice to do otherwise.

James Stockdale spoke, movingly, of the flip side of all the freedoms we have in this modern world. He said it's that we're still our brothers keeper.

Eisenhower, for his part, tried to remember that freedom was really just the opportunity for self-discipline.

Marcus Aurelius could do whatever he wanted. He could have been neuro, or Tiberius, or Hadrian. Instead, he chose to be good.

He chose to care about other people. He chose moderation. He chose wisdom. He chose justice. It was a deeply courageous thing to do.

Protect your own good. Musoneus Rufus, one of Epochitis's teachers, taught that human beings are all born with an innate goodness, whereas he put it with an inclination to virtue.

It's our choices that decide whether that goodness comes out or not. We're not bad people, essentially, though we might sometimes do bad things.

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