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Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. On Friday, we do double-duty, not just reading our

daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations

on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator,

and a literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation

from the Stoics with some analysis from me and then we'll send you out into the world to

turn these words into works.

Life is emotionally abusive. One day, everything's easy and the next, everything that can go

wrong does. One minute, everyone tells you that you're great. The next, they've all

gained up against you. Life is too short. It's also in term, in a bit long. Things move

insanely fast. They also take forever. Look at Marcus Realis' life. He loses his father

and then he's adopted by two powerful stepfathers. He's suddenly thrust into power, then forced

to wait years to wield it. He's blessed by enormous wealth and then haunted by tragedy

after tragedy. Even his job is emotionally manipulative and impossible. At one point, Marcus

describes being emperor as a kind of deranged world where one earns a bad reputation by good deeds.

So when the Stoics talked about the need for an even keel, this was why? When Antoninus

hands power over to Marcus, his final word was equanimity for a reason. When you're in a volatile

relationship, when you're being gasslet, it's incredibly important that one has a strong sense

of self, a strong sense of inner peace. It was Marcus Realis' inner citadel that he relied on

to get through the abuse that life threw at him. It was his ability to be like the rock that the

waves crashed over that allowed him to endure each onslaught of praise or adversity. What about you?

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