We Can Find The Gift In It | Reduce Wants, Increase Happiness
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We wrote an email over at Daily Dad (please subscribe if you haven’t!) recently which notes Robert F. Kennedy’s troubled childhood in the troubled Kennedy household. His family mourned the loss of his older brother. They put their hopes in his brother John. They fretted about his sister. His father thought that Bobby had little potential, that he wasn’t everything a young Kennedy should be, so the boy, as one Kennedy aide observed, was “overlooked.”
That was unfair. It must have been painful. Yet Kennedy’s biographer, Evan Thomas, would write that this turned out to be a gift, arguing that he “had been saved by neglect.” Because it meant Bobby didn’t have to deal with all the pressure. It let him develop at his own pace. It also allowed him to develop a conscience and an ability to empathize that most of the rest of the family lacked.
When we look at the life of Marcus Aurelius (if you want a biography try Lives of the Stoics or How To Think Like a Roman Emperor), we can see a similar pattern. His early days as a boy were defined by loss. His father, Verus, died when he was just three.
If you want to do more reading on these topics, we highly recommend Dying Everyday by James Romm (and we have a podcast with him on this topic). Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe is a great modern read on one of the biggest crimes of the 20th/21st centuries. And for more on the life of Seneca and Thrasea and some Stoics who did resist Nero, check out Lives of the Stoics (signed copies here).
✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail
🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.
📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, |
| 0:09.8 | illustrated with stories from history, current events and literature to help you be better at what you do. |
| 0:15.0 | And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, |
| 0:22.5 | something to think on, |
| 0:24.1 | something to leave you with, to journal about |
| 0:26.4 | whatever it is you happen to be doing. |
| 0:28.7 | So let's get into it. |
| 0:40.0 | We can find a gift in it. We can find a gift in it. |
| 0:43.7 | If you're one of those kids who didn't get everything you need from your parents, |
| 0:46.8 | and let's face it, pretty much everyone is, this is probably something you carry with you. |
| 0:51.5 | Maybe you're angry or sad, wounded or resentful. You wonder what could |
| 0:54.6 | have been, who you could be. If they'd been around more, or been more patient or loving or |
| 0:59.3 | understood you. And while there is no doubt that this experience was tragic, perhaps there's another way of looking at it. |
| 1:05.0 | We wrote an email over at Daily Dad recently, which notes Robert F. Kennedy's troubled childhood in the troubled Kennedy household. |
| 1:12.0 | His family mourned the loss of his old. in the troubled Kennedy household. |
| 1:13.2 | His family mourned the loss of his older brother. |
| 1:15.4 | They put their hopes in his brother John. |
| 1:17.5 | They fretted about his troubled sister. |
| 1:20.6 | His father thought that Bobby had little potential, that he wasn't everything a young Kennedy should be, so the boy, as one Kennedy aide observed, was overlooked. |
| 1:30.0 | That wasn't fair, it must have been painful. |
| 1:32.8 | And yet Kennedy's biographer Evan Thomas |
| 1:35.2 | would write that this turned out to be a gift, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.