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, visitdailystoic.com. Labor Day was first proposed by Matthew McGuire, a labor union secretary in 1882 in New York.

It is, he said, a tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country,

and the idea that they deserve to rest for

that work. The Stoics were hard-driving, no-excuses, disciplined folks who, despite their acceptance

of slavery in the ancient world, would still have appreciated this idea. The mind must be given

relaxation. It will rise improved and sharper after a good break,

Seneca wrote. He used the analogy of farming. A field that isn't given a break where crops are not

rotated will quickly lose its fertility. And so too will a mind in a body that's overworked.

So by all means, take your much-deserved break today. We are human beings, after all, not human

doings. Life will be long if you're lucky, and you have much great work in front of you.

If you break down early, wear yourself out before your time, where will that leave you? Where will

that leave us? In a way, overwork is selfish, no matter how much the workaholic claims they are doing it for other people,

because it deprives them in the world of that later fertility. It causes needless breakdown and injury.

As Seneca observed, constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul.

Nobody likes a person who is all business all the time.

So go out today and live today. Rest from your labor. Come back better for it. Come back improved

and sharper for it. That's the idea. This is your holiday. Take it.

...