Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom

designed to help you in your everyday life.

On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual

lives.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

Let it pound your head.

For years you've worked, for years you've sacrificed, you've risked, you've hustled,

you've made tough calls, maybe you even left a few knives buried in a few backs.

But all of it was aimed at getting somewhere, somewhere you felt you needed to go, to do

something you thought was important.

And then it got you here, and it was a little disappointing, wasn't it?

Thus it has always been this way.

What do you think Seneca felt upon being elected consul, knowing that it means another day

in Nero's court?

How do you think Marcus Aurelius felt after another victory on the battlefield, another

year in office?

The question pounds my head to national things.

What's a lifetime of achievement?

It's nothing is what it is, or at least not what you think it is.

Soon you'll be ashes or bones, Marcus Aurelius writes in meditations.

The mere name at most, and even that is just a sound and echo.

The things we want in life are empty, stale and trivial, he says, shadows and dust, shadows

...