Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

Who would ever want to be king? It seems like it would be exciting and glamorous and intoxicating. But, you know,

Marcus Aurelius did not want to be king. He dreaded it. I fictionalized this story slightly in the

fable that I wrote, which is, I think, great for kids, the boy who would be king. But it's true.

Marcus Aurelius supposedly wept when he found out he would be emperor because he knew how

many bad kings there had been in history and also more sweetly because he was just a boy, he did not

want to move out of his mother's house. And it's perfectly reasonable that Marcus Aurelius

doubted whether he could do so difficult a job, doubted whether he could make it through with his virtue and his values intact.

In fact, that's probably why he did make for a good emperor

because he was worried about these things.

It's rational to be wary of power.

It's also rational to be wary of people who are not.

It's reasonable to want to live a quieter life. It's a sign of

character not to be tantalized by the trappings of fame or wealth. But power doesn't wait for the

perfect person to raise their hand. Someone will wield it. Someone always does. So while it's admirable

not to lust for the spotlight, the harder challenge comes when

responsibility comes looking for you, to accept it like Marcus did, and to worry about keeping

your values and virtue intact, and then to actually fight to be the person that philosophy wants

you to be as he did, to be the leader who doesn't want to be king,

but who is willing to serve when duty calls. And that's the idea in the boy who would be king,

which I think is celebrating its sixth anniversary now. I wrote it to my kids during the pandemic,

...