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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day 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.

What can you give up to help others? It's impossible to overstate the terror and the uncertainty that swarmed Marcus Aurelius' life.

Just while writing Meditations, Rome fought a war against the Parthenians that lasted five years. The River Tiber had one of its worst floods in history, destroying homes and livestock and delivering a famine.

Eventually, victorious against the Parthenians, celebrations were short-lived because returning soldiers brought home a deadly contagion, which became known as the Antenine Plague.

Marcus would lose eight children, his co-emperor, most of the Pretorian Guard, his top commander, his most trusted colleague, all to the plague.

Fate seemingly testing Marcus with one catastrophe after another wasn't done yet, with Rome crippled by famine and plague, hostile tribes jumped on the opportunity to attack.

Now Rome faced both a plague and a war. All were aware that Rome faced a great crisis, biographer Frank McLean writes, and the emperor had to attack between stressing the urgency of the situation and not affecting the morale of Romans by doing anything that smacked of panic.

The first step was obvious. He needed help, more troops, medical experts, leaders, less obvious, was how he to forge it. Rome's economy was primitive and brittle before the wars and plagues broke out.

Leading by example, McLean continues, Marcus conducted a two-month sale of imperial effects and possessions, putting under the hammer not just sumptuous furniture from the imperial apartments, gold goblets, silver flaggons, crystals, and chandeliers, but also his wife's silken, gold-embroidered robes, and her jewels.

I tell this story in the boy who would be king too because it's such a simple, beautiful lesson worth considering whatever your age, whoever you are.

Even in the worst times we have more than we need, even in the worst times we can find some way to be generous to others.

The four virtues of stoicism obligate us to do this. It takes courage to give when we have little. It takes discipline to do without. It takes wisdom to know who and how to help. It takes justice to share and to be of service.

That's what Marcus was doing, facing the problem, not running from it, valuing his responsibilities, not his material possessions, prioritizing his people's well-being, not his own, finding solutions, not excuses.

So what can you do today? Who can you help? What good can you do for the common good? And how can you teach your kids, your employees, your neighbors, to do the same?

And look, you can get the boy who would be king in the Daily Stoke store, and if you order from us, we'll send you the audio book for free. It's got more than an hour of bonuses for me about the book, about Marcus, and about a bunch of other great stuff.

And we've got personalized sign copies as well. So check that out at store.dailystoke.com, but I hope you can more importantly find a way to do good. Give something up to help others, because that's what stoicism is about.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music App today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.

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