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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoke.com.

Patients will be key to surviving this. We're all getting a little stir crazy. We were just about to launch that project we had worked on for years.

We were just about to sign a deal along in the making. We were about to make a career change. We were about to board a plane for a backpacking trip.

And now we're cooped up for who knows how long. How much will it set us back at work? Will that client still be interested? Will it still be lucrative? Will that career still exist? That airline? It's impossible to say.

We will have to wait weeks or months or years to find out all we know is that we've never had our patients tested quite like this.

When the Emperor Hadrian started devising his succession plan, he bumped into a problem. It wasn't just that he didn't have a son. It was that a boy who he had his eye on, who he thought could make it to the throne, was only 17 years old.

And so his work around was to adopt a 51 year old man named Antoninus on the condition that he adopted and trained that 17 year old boy named Marcus Aurelius.

Given life expectancy statistics at the time Hadrian figured that this region and mentor might be at the helm for five years.

Marcus Aurelius could have felt it any day now he'd be getting that promotion instead Antoninus lived and ruled for 23 years. It could have driven him crazy, but instead it made Marcus better.

In the 23 years of Antoninus's reign Marcus spent just two nights away from him. Biographer Frank McLean tells us another severe test of his patients and stoical character.

As severe a test as it was, some 30 years later Marcus would write in his journal with great adoration for those years and what he learned from his adopted father, hard work, persistence, self reliance, always respect for people who practice philosophy.

Think of Santa Caspending years in exile. Think of Epic teed as having to wait until he was 30. That's how long the minimum term of slavery was in Roman times until he could be free.

Think of Stockdale in that prison camp for close to a decade. These were not easy situations. They were not short weights, but these still ex endured them. They survived them. They chose to be made better for them.

Just as we can choose to be made better for what we are going through right now, who knows how long it will last, who knows if the projections are right, all we can do is work hard, persist, be self reliant, practice philosophy.

You can lead a good life anywhere Marcus Aurelius wrote, including in a lockdown during a pandemic. You just have to be patient and you have to choose to be productive.

Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. If you could leave us a review in iTunes, it helps a great deal. And of course, if you know anyone who had benefit from these messages, please spread the word. Thanks.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.