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Welcome to the Daily Stoke podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes illustrated with stories from history,

current events and literature to help you be better at what you do.

And at the beginning of the week we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoke, intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing.

So let's get into it.

Where are they now?

Marcus Arelius loved history and he loved literature. He loved reading about the courts of past emperors. He loved the plays of great Romans in their poems.

He loved the lectures of Epictetus, which had been given to him by his teacher, Rousticus.

Sometimes as he poured over these pages, a thought struck him.

Where are they now? What happened to the advisors of Augustus or the generals of Alexander or Alexander himself?

The answer was as obvious as it was inescapable, yet so easily ignored or denied by most of us in the course of our busy daily existence.

The band Deathcap for Cutie has a new verse about this. They sing in every movie I watch from the 50s, there's only one thought that swirls around my head now.

And that's that everyone there on the screen, yeah, everyone there on the screen, well, they're all dead now. They're all dead now.

That's what Marcus tried to remember about the supposedly important or powerful people that he read about. They were all gone now, barely remembered.

Their names were no longer familiar. Their statues were falling down. Their post-Jumus fame already expiring. Not that it did them any good.

And he knew and this was the important part that the same thing was going to happen to him.

Everything is transitory. He wrote the knower and the known. What mattered then was the present moment and not much else.

What mattered was being good because it was good, not because it would make him famous or wealthy or more powerful.

Memento Mori. We are all mortal. Life is transitory and brief. It cannot be taken for granted. It cannot be delayed or deferred because we long for immortality or legacy, which again we cannot enjoy.

They are all dead now. And someday, perhaps very soon you will be laid alongside them and all your plans and pretensions with you. Live and act accordingly.

And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Steal of Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman.

I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and there's these sort of weekly meditations.

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