Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic. 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 DailyStoic.com.

The arc is long, but it bends this way. When you look at a map of the world from a distance, everything seems smooth. The more you zoom in, the bumpier it gets.

Suddenly, mountain ranges leap up at you, enormous lakes emerge, vast distances become apparent. In a sense, history is a lot like this too.

Just a handful of generations separate Xeno from Marcus Aurelius, but this span of history includes the rise and fall of Athens and Rome, plagues, tyrants, wars, political violence, tragedy, and so much more.

We've talked about this before. Living through history is no easy thing. It was not easy to be Seneca, whose life span the reigns of five emperors, most of them bad. It's not easy being alive today either.

The last three decades alone have included the bursting of multiple financial bubbles, terrorist attacks, impeachment, wars, genocides, and technological disruptions.

Given that we live life day to day, all these ups and downs can exhaust us, even break us. They can make us doubt our faith in institutions, in our religion, in our fellow human beings, which is why sometimes we must look at things as Plato did.

Her Marcus Aurelius's reminder, it's best to take a bird's eye view, he said, in meditations, and see everything all at once, of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings, and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms, and silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, and markets.

When you zoom out like this, things seem less bumpy, less at odds, less dire, less disillusioning. Today, one day after the most consequential election in American history, we can pair Plato's view with an expression popular with the civil rights leaders.

The arc of history is long, they said, but it bends towards truth and justice. Whatever you think about the direction of your country, however alarmed or worried you are, on whatever part of the political spectrum you occupy can be worth noting that the events of the week, the year, even the decade, are just a blip.

They loom disproportionately large to you because you are living them, because you have not yet gotten the context of the future. Take a breath, take solace in the larger arc, things actually are getting better. Progress is happening, the world is safe for a kinder, smarter than it was when the Stoics were alive, than it was even 50 years ago.

Does that absolve you of your obligations in the present? Absolutely not. Courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, always, just with a little bit of perspective.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. You can sign up to get our daily email at dailystoic.com slash email. I also encourage you if you want to take your practice of Stoicism to the next level to sign up for Daily Stoic Life, which is our members only program. It's got all sorts of awesome benefits. You can check that out at dailystoiclife.com.

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