Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation

designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.

Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of

history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example,

and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

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When the statues still had paint on them, it's easy to forget that they did not live in classical Athens or ancient Rome.

The ancients did not live in the past at all. They lived, obviously, in the present.

Greece was not a quaint and quiet place where people wore cute togas. It was the center of the world, a bustling cultural and economic capital,

where cutting-edge ideas were debated and welcomed by society. The Rome of Marcus Aurelius was

majestic and mighty. He did not walk through ruins.

No, an imposing Colosseum roar with enormous crowds. The harbors bristled with mass of an empire's

worth of ships. He didn't look up at white marble statues, missing noses and hands in some

antiseptic museum. No, as we discussed recently

on an episode of the Daily Stoad podcast with John Avalon, the statues still had paint on them,

bright reds, deep blues, gold accents. They were bold, almost lifelike, meant to awe and

inspire, not sit quietly behind glass.

This is how it is for every moment in time, every era. We all live in an unfolding present,

where things are uncertain, where they could go in any direction. No one lives in a painting

or a photograph or a book. We live in the messy world

and in different world. But for all this, we also live in a world where we have agency,

where we, like our ancestors, get to make decisions that shape the future for coming generations.

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