Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty not just reading our

daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations

on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Heart of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator,

translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation

from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world

to turn these words into works.

There's an old joke when the gods wish to punish us that give us everything we've ever

wanted. Look at most people who win the lottery. Look at most famous people. Look at most

world leaders to borrow an expression from one particularly unhappy world leader. What do

they look like? They look like they're tired of winning because winning isn't actually

as fun as it seemed like it would be and most of what we want turns out to not really

be worth it. This was Marcus Aurelius' point. When we look at history and other people,

it's hard not to see how trivial the things we want so passionately are. But what if you

don't realize that yourself or rather what if you don't realize that the presidency or

a billion dollars isn't that meaningful until after you've given up everything to get

it, after you've traded your marriage or your principles or your youth to accomplish it?

Now your free of illusions says a character in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. How does it

feel to be free of one's illusions? The protagonist can only answer painful and empty, painful

and empty. In this way, we are almost lucky not to get everything we want, not to be allowed

our trivial passionate yearnings because we are allowed to continue in ignorance. We don't

have to do the hard work on ourselves and really look in the mirror. But of course, this

is what a philosopher does all the time. Instead of hiding behind Luxe protection or

...