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Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation,

but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Steve Enhancelman.

And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Markis Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

You're not seeing the whole picture. It can be really discouraging. Online, we see people being rude to each other. We see the signalling and the endless bragging and the status obsession.

We see people who aren't being safe or smart or conscientious during the pandemic. We see people who use their kids as props to get validation and attention or money.

And in some cases, sending them away when being a parent becomes too difficult, it's everyone like this, we ask ourselves, am I doing something wrong? Am I actually the one who is crazy? No.

We have to remember, we are not seeing the whole picture. We're not seeing people who are social distancing because, by definition, they're either staying indoors or far enough apart that they don't fit in the frame of an Instagram photo.

You're not seeing your fellow moderates because they don't get in ridiculous arguments and they don't go around trolling people.

The people who live their lives with quiet dignity, privacy, and goodness, their names and faces are never going to be plastered across the news.

Markis Relius tells us how we have to make sure that we're not seeing what the enemy wants us to see, that we're only seeing what's really there.

We got to remember, the crazy people are the ones desperate for attention. Reckless people want you to know what they're doing. They want to gaslight you. They have to.

Their cognitive dissonance demands that they must try and convince you. And the only way they know how to do that is by being louder and angrier and more competitive and more shameless and more certain than everyone else.

It's all very strange and ultimately rooted in their own issues. It has nothing to do with you. The important thing is to understand how much this can distort our picture of reality.

It'll mess with your compass if you let it. You have to see through the noise, through that distortion field. You have to use objective judgment and essential stoic skill to account for the biases and the outliers.

When you do, when you have honed that timeless discipline of perception, you will realize you're not actually alone.

Stoicism just doesn't photograph well. It's not viral. It's quiet. It's private. It's self-sufficient. But don't let you think that you're the only one sticking to those core virtues of courage and moderation and justice and wisdom in a time of excess and stupidity, selfishness and paranoia.

As they say on arrest to development, there are dozens of us. Dozens!

Nothing to fear, but fear itself. But there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate.

That's Sena Kuzmoral Letters. I'm reading today from the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on Wisdom Perseverance in the Art of Living by yours truly. My co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman.

You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic Store. Over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it.

It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best cellist. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out.

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