Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday we do double duty not just reading our daily meditation

but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 meditations on wisdom,

perseverance in the art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful

collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman.

So today, we'll give you a quick meditation

from the Stoics with some analysis from me,

and then we'll send you out into the world

to turn these words in to works.

In works. In

In meditations, Marcus Aurelius says that what we throw on top of a fire is fuel for the fire.

But anyone who has ever had a little campfire going knows how easily you can snuff out flames with a poorly placed log or even a few sticks.

Marcus is speaking metaphorically of obstacles not an actual campfire, but the metaphor only works with a few assumptions. For one he's

assuming that everything is flammable. Is that really true? Not exactly. But even if we

grant that everything will incinerate at some temperature, we're still admitting that things can burn at a wide range of temperature.

So perhaps what Marcus really means is that your fire has to be really hot. It has to be really roaring if you want to be able to

turn what is thrown into it as he says into flames and brightness. If we look at the

metaphor Marcus uses right before this fire when his message is clearer.

A strong stomach digests what it eats, he says.

So then a small weak fire is not going to be able to handle a big dry log.

So just as a weak stomach isn't going to be able to digest what you put in it,

a small weak fire is not going to be able to handle a big dry log, let alone something hardier.

And it's definitely not going to be able to melt steel or glass.

...