Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

Stoop and build them up. Zeno lost everything in a shipwreck, a family fortune, his occupation, his entire future

swallowed by the sea. On at least two occasions, Seneca lost everything he'd worked so hard for.

First, illness derailed his legal career, and it took him a full ten years, his prime years,

to recuperate. Then, just as he was getting things back on track, he ran a foul of

the emperor and was banished from Rome for nearly as long as he had been infirm. Zeno and Seneca,

like countless other Stoics and people throughout history, were members of Rudyard Kipling's

Club, the one where we learned to watch the things you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build them up

with worn out tools. There was nothing Zeno could have done to prevent that shipwreck.

There was nothing Seneca could have done to prevent that illness or that exile.

Just as there was nothing that you could have done to prevent this or that bad break.

But here you are,

facing it. That's life. Stuff happens. Then what? We can whine about it. We can shift blame.

We can become bitter or disillusioned. Or we can lose and start again at our beginnings.

Kipling writes, and never breathe a word about your loss. Shipwreck, exile,

failure, getting fired, a season-ending injury. None of these things are good. They are certainly

not things we would choose. But for a stoic, they can be good if they make you good. It's not

unfortunate if one finds a way to make something fortunate from them.

So stoop down, pick up the worn out tools, and start building again.

Hi, it's Ryan.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoog podcast.

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