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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom and temperance.

And here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time.

And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring.

Hey, everyone, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I have raved about the works of James Rom, many times his book, dying every day, a biography of Seneca, incredible.

And I've had him on the podcast before, so check that out, but is translation of Seneca for Princeton University presses ancient wisdom series how to die is just the best. It is the ultimate collection of Seneca's musings on the shortness of life.

Seneca talked about death so much, it feels almost a 300 page book, but it's just fire, just all of it is so good. And that's why we have this episode. Seneca believed, you know, that life is a journey toward death, but he also was saying that death is happening right now, you're dying even as you listen to this, this time you spent you cannot get back.

And so we have to practice death, we have to be aware of death, we can't let time slip by. And we have to even as Seneca finds, we have to go out well. It's the final act of our life and how are we going to do that.

So today's episode is an excerpt from the audio book of that ancient wisdom series how to die translated by James ROM. Thank you to the folks at Tantor Media, hybrid audio, which are both a division of recorded books. They were nice enough to share this with us so you can get a sample of it.

And if you want to check out the book, you can get on Amazon, on the book, anywhere books are sold. But really I love this series of books. I'm a big fan. I recommend reading the Stokes in multiple translations and I've read all of Seneca's works, but to be able to go back and see James ROM, who's such a wise sort of student and and biographer of Seneca pick the things that really jumped out to him, render them in his own translations.

It's just a rare treat. Again, I recommend you listen to my interview with James, read dying every day and check this out. We're going to focus on the fear of death. We're going to focus on becoming part of the whole.

And there's just a lot here. Check this out. Seneca's how to die from Princeton University Press translated by James ROM. Of course, the audio book brought to us from Tantor Media, who has it happens also published the audio books of a few of my books. So anyways, let's get right into it.

5. Become a part of the whole. Seneca found great comfort in the universality of death and decay, not only for humanity, but for all things. The earth itself would die and be renewed in a regular cycle repeating throughout time, according to stoic cosmologic precepts that Seneca shared.

In the two passages which follow, Seneca offers ideas of death's universality as consolations to grieving friends. The first is addressed to Marquia, who had lost a son. The second to Polybius, a powerful freedman at the court of Emperor Claudius, who had lost a brother.

Imagine Marquia, that your father is speaking to you from that citadel in the sky. Why, he says, does morning hold you in its grip for so long, my daughter? Why do you linger in such great ignorance of the truth? That you think your son has been unfairly dealt with when he has gone whole and sound to join his ancestors, leaving his household also whole and sound?

Don't you realize what great whirlwinds fortune uses to royal all things, or that she shows a kind and gentle face to no one, except those who have the least dealings with her?

Should I list for you those kings who would have been supremely happy if death had only removed them from looming evils a bit sooner, or the Roman leaders whose greatness will lack nothing if you only take away a portion of their lifespan?

Or the very noble and brilliant men who have bent down with their next laid bear for the blow of the soldiers' sword?

Just look at your father and grandfather. He came into the power of an attacker he did not know. While I, allowing no one to act against me, abstaining from food, showed the world I possessed as lofty a mind as had appeared from my writings.

Why should one who died most fortunately be mourned in our house for an extreme length of time?

We all come together into one place. From where no longer enveloped in deep night we perceive that nothing in your world is as desirable as you thought, nor lofty nor brilliant.

Rather, it's all lowly, leaden, fraught, and lit by only a tiny portion of our light.

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