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Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes illustrated with stories from history,

current events and literature to help you be better at what you do.

And at the beginning of the week we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoke, intention for the week,

something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing.

So let's get into it.

Help them be better.

One evening, Epictetus woke up to hear someone in his house, walking towards the noise he found a criminal had stolen the iron lamp he kept burning in a shrine in his front hallway.

As always, Epictetus handled the situation with calmness and humor.

Tomorrow, he said to himself, you will find an earthenware lamp for a man can only lose what he has.

But what if Epictetus had been awake when the man walked in? What if he had caught the thief red handed?

What do you have beaten the criminal up? What do you have fought for his prized lamp pressed charges after demanded restitution?

Actually, if we know anything about Epictetus, we can say confidently that the situation would have gone almost exactly as it did.

To him, the theft was a reminder from fate that we don't truly possess anything.

It was also a reminder we can guess that human beings out of desperation or greed do unvertuous things.

That is something we don't control, but we do control how we respond.

We can imagine that Epictetus had he caught the thief and gotten to talk to the man, might have responded as the bishop does so beautifully in laym is when he catches the thief and he says, take this stolen silver and use it to become an honest man.

People will betray us in life. They will take from us.

We can be hurt and angry and broken about it or we can use it as Epictetus did as a reminder of the transient nature of possession.

We can use it as an opportunity as they did in that famous play to be merciful, to let them think better of it, to forgive as Marcus tried to do when he was betrayed by Evidius Cassius.

We can get better and we can try to make them better too.

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