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

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation,

but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoke,

365 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Steven Hanselman.

And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Markis Relius,

Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

There are two ways to go. As Caesar overwhelmed and destroyed the Roman Republic, the Romans had a choice.

Neither choice was good, but it was all they had. They could allow it to happen or they could fight.

They could accept the bridal, as Plutarch put it, and with some humiliation, keep their estates and their status and their life,

or they could fight desperately, hopelessly, against overwhelming odds. It's like the lyrics to the Mountain Joy song.

There's two ways it goes now, as our love comes crashing down. You could be the flame that burns out, or you could turn and burn it down.

Cicero chose to go quietly along. Cato refused. Both were powerless, turns out, to affect much change at that moment. Caesar was too powerful. The Republic had already fallen.

But Cato chose to lay down his life to make the ultimate sacrifice and a statement of resistance.

In so doing, he sealed Caesar's fate and made a statement about freedom and liberty loud enough that the founders of America heard it 17 years later, informed a new nation around it.

A stoic doesn't always win, but they never go quietly along, keeping their stuff, keeping their fancy position at the cost of being a slave, or a sellout, they'd rather be dead.

They'd rather lose it all if there was a 1% chance of making a difference, not for themselves, than for future generations.

A stoic fights, whether it's against a hedge fund looting the great company they've worked for for the last decade, or if it's against an illegitimate Vichy state.

A stoic doesn't go quietly into the good night like Cicero. They rage, like Cato. They say what needs to be said, they don't let the light go out.

They'd rather burn it down than give in, because the Republic, the literal, metaphorical, it matters.

What you stand for, what you believe in, it's worth biting for.

Doing the right thing is enough. When you've done well and another is benefited by it, why, like a fool, do you look for a third thing on top?

Credit for the good deed or favor in return. Marcus Realis' Meditations, 773.

...