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They worked hard for it. They took it seriously. They liked it. They didn’t want to lose it.

Who would? Who would want to lose their position? Their identity? Their career or their home?

But when Helvidius was threatened with removal from the Senate by the emperor Vespasian, he refused to refrain from his criticism. Rutilius was willing to be exiled. So was Agrippinus. They were not willing to trade their self-respect for maintaining their access. They understood there were fates worse in life than being cut off—in fact, they would rather be cut off from Rome than cut off from their values.

Courage is not an easy thing. It is not free. It is not without risk or sacrifice. That’s the whole point. If it weren’t, there would be nothing to be afraid of, nothing for fear to whisper in our ear about. Courage is about triumphing over that doubt—it is fighting to do what’s right, to remain consistent with what philosophy demands of us.

We are living, right now, in a world where leaders are not doing this and we are experiencing the consequences. Apparently there is not enough shame in the world to get them to change.

But what about us? Where is our bravery? Where will we draw the line? What will we put on the line?

​Courage is Calling (signed copies available here) by Ryan Holiday—one of four books in the Stoic Virtues series—features stories of men and women like Helvidius, who chose exile over compromise, truth over comfort, values over access.

Because sooner or later, life will ask us the same question—and it’s better to have decided who we are before that moment comes.

Get signed copies of Courage is Calling and all of the books in the Stoic Virtues series exclusively through The Painted Porch.

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PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:

Read: They Literally Cannot Understand This​

YOUTUBE TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK:

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What habit can help improve your parenting, clear your mind, and change your life? Find out over on Ryan Holiday’s YouTube channel.

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PODCAST TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK:

Has your kid found something that lights them up? This week on The Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan talks about what happens when our kids "find their thing:"

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WHAT RYAN HOLIDAY IS READING:

— The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

​SOCIAL MEDIA POST OF THE WEEK:

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Join Ryan Holiday for Daily Stoic LIVE, coming this summer and fall to cities across the US, Australia, and New Zealand. Learn more and get your tickets at dailystoiclive.com!

PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:

YOUTUBE TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK:

​The Stoic Reason to Turn Down 17 Million Dollars​

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This week on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel, find out what the Stoics believed about the cost of personal values.

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PODCAST TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK:

​Arthur Brooks’ Ultimate Philosophy Masterclass​

What are you missing by only seeing the world through one philosophy? In this masterclass, bestselling author and Harvard professor Arthur Brooks joins Ryan to break down the biggest schools of thought and reveal how they fit together in a way most people never see.

🎙️ Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify​

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WHAT RYAN HOLIDAY IS READING:

— The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

​SOCIAL MEDIA POST OF THE WEEK:

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Maybe it could have been avoided. Maybe it wasn’t fair. Maybe it happened to you.

You got screwed over. You got humiliated. You were robbed of something you worked hard for. You screwed up big time. And now you’re in the middle of a scandal. You’re at rock bottom. Deserved or not, preventable or not, you’re at the mercy of fate, of the market, of a mob.

The author John Fante (whose incredible novel Ask the Dust is a classic—grab it here from The Painted Porch) had a number of bad breaks in his career. It just didn’t go the way he wanted it to go. That could have made him angry. It could have turned him into a drunk or a deadbeat. It didn’t. “I think the one thing that a writer must avoid is bitterness,” John Fante told a journalist in 1979. “I think it’s the one fault that can destroy him. It can shrivel him up...I’ve fought it all my life.”

It was that fight that his son admired most about his father, who soldiered on as a writer (and was eventually rediscovered and rightly celebrated). “I’m not naïve enough to think good work always wins out in the end,” his son James Fante explained. “There are plenty of painters who died in Auschwitz. I don’t necessarily think there is justice in the world, it’s that [my father] had the strength of character not to let it break him.”

Injustices will befall us. Certainly, they befall the Stoics. Seneca was exiled, so was Epictetus. Others had their property confiscated, others still were executed. Think of James Stockdale and how the public treated him after that disastrous vice presidential debate in 1992. What matters is how we endure and bear these moments, whether our strength of character allows them to break us or not. What matters is if we stay good despite bad things happening to us, whether we let them steal our decency, our joy, even our sense of humor.

We don’t control those big external events. We do control how we remain inside.

P.S. This is one of the main tenets of Stoicism, and it’s why the philosophy is so practical for us today. Keep these timeless principles close at hand with our beautiful leatherbound edition of The Daily Stoic book—just as the Stoics’ teachings have endured throughout the centuries, this edition is designed to last.

​Get yours exclusively from the Daily Stoic Store. Signed copies available!​

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We’re busy. We’re tired. We have so much to do. We had dreams once, sure, but they slowly deflated. The mortgage, the kids, the job, checking our phones, scrolling, watching TV, the hopeless stories on the news—that’s how we fill our days. It’s a slow downward spiral that Bruce Springsteen sang about in “Racing in the Street:”

If you’re not that guy, you at least know him or her. They’re a mainstay of the modern world. Overworked, overtired, and under-appreciated. Social media is to blame, right? The capitalist pigs are responsible, yeah? It’s because of the 24-hour news cycle.

Certainly none of those things help, but the truth is that this is a timeless problem. It goes back much further than Bruce or even this century. Because Seneca spoke about those guys, too. “How much time has been lost to groundless anguish,” he writes, “greedy desire, the charms of society; how little is left to you from your own store of time.” Wake up, he says. Stop sleepwalking. Stop giving away what you can never get back. That’s from his essay On the Shortness of Life (copies available at The Painted Porch), in which he tried to get the reader—as Bruce Springsteen does in his best songs—to “realize that you're dying before your time."

We only get one life. Once time ticks by, it never comes back. Yes, each of us will die. That’s a fact. But for the moment, we’re alive. Which is why we have to live. Which is why we have to protect our time, our dreams, our spirit. We can’t give it up piece by piece. We can’t start dying before our time.

We have to live. Now. While we still can.

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It was never meant to be seen by prying eyes. It certainly wasn’t meant to be published as a book. It was written in an antiquated, foreign language, full of ancient philosophy that, until recently, few had ever heard of. And the man doing the writing lived a life unimaginably different and distant from yours.

Then why bother reading a book like that? How could it possibly affect or improve your life?

Yet it is this book that Frederick the Great reportedly rode into battle with in his saddlebags, as did four-star General James Mattis, who carried it with him on deployments throughout the Middle East. It is this book that American presidents have read and raved about. It is this book that Robert Louis Stevenson, the great novelist, described as unlike any other. It is this book that Beatrice Webb, who helped to found the London School of Economics and created the concept of collective bargaining, called her “manual of devotion.” That actors and musicians and entrepreneurs are still reading today.

So why has Meditations by Marcus Aurelius endured and influenced across so many centuries? And what makes its ancient wisdom still relevant to the modern problems we face today?

Because in Meditations, Marcus attempts to answer those questions we all ask› ourselves at some point: What is the good life and how do I live it? How do I stop running from pain and misfortune and start dealing with my problems? How do I learn to treat other people better when they can be so petty, miserable, and annoying—and how do I learn to treat myself better, too?

Marcus answers these questions with great clarity and wisdom in Meditations. In fact, he gives us an entire “design for living,” writes Gregory Hays in his translation of the book. Marcus gives us a set of rules and guidelines to live our lives by, practical exercises that made him a better person and can make you one, too.

That's why people have read Meditations for the last two thousand years. That’s why it’s a favorite of presidents and prisoners, men and women, soldiers and activists, entrepreneurs and everyday people.

Just as Heraclitus says you can never step in the same river twice—because the river has changed and you have also changed—Meditations isn’t a book you read just once and understand. Because while it's easy to read, it’s the work of a lifetime to explore its vast depths. That’s what we’ve been working so hard to do here at Daily Stoic over the last decade—trying to make the wisdom of this enduring book more accessible and approachable to everyone.

We’ve spent thousands of hours with Marcus’s writings and the work of experts on Stoic philosophy to understand how we can use this wisdom to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

That’s exactly why we created How To Read Meditations: A Daily Stoic Digital Guide, built for anyone who wants to go beyond reading Marcus’s words and actually live them. In 11 modules, you’ll go deeper into the text and learn takeaways you can apply to your life right away. It’s the companion we wish we’d had when we first started—part masterclass, part daily practice—designed to turn timeless wisdom into real change. And now, for Meditations Month, happening throughout the month of April to celebrate Marcus Aurelius's birthday (April 26th), we’re inviting you to work through it with us, alongside thousands of others around the world who are committed to living their lives with more intention and purpose.

Here’s the best way to get started: purchase the leatherbound edition of Meditations—a beautiful, heirloom-quality version of the book—and you’ll receive the digital guide, completely free. That includes all 11 modules, AND an invitation to a LIVE Q&A with Ryan Holiday, where he’ll take your questions on all things Meditations, Stoicism, and how to apply these ideas to your life right now, in today’s world.

Reading Marcus Aurelius can change your life, but only if you know how to read his work.

​Head here now to grab your Meditations book and guide bundle. Start living your life with more courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom by deepening your understanding of one of the most enduring books on life ever written. We’ll see you in there!

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There’s nothing wrong with success. There’s nothing wrong with power. There’s nothing wrong with living a nice life, with achievement or admiration.

Certainly many Stoics did precisely that. Seneca. Cato. Marcus Aurelius. They were important and well-known. They were admired. They were influential. But you know what? They should have shrugged all that off. They appreciate the success, but it wasn’t something they coveted. It may have impressed others, but it wasn’t how they defined themselves.

“The main thing, Binx,” Walter Wade says after receiving the most significant social honor in New Orleans in Walker Percy’s Stoicism-adjacent novel, The Moviegoer, “is to be humble, to make Golden Fleece and be humble about it.” It might have meant a lot to others, he was saying, but it didn’t mean anything to him.

That’s how we might assume Marcus Aurelius felt about a lot of what was thrown at him. In fact, one of the lines in Meditations (get the "How to Read Meditations" digital guide FREE when you purchase a leatherbound copy of Meditations this month only!) suggests as much, where he says he measures himself not by how many honors he’s received, but by how many he’s turned down. He didn’t make “Golden Fleece,” but did remind himself that the purple cloak of the emperor was nothing more than an ordinary one “dyed with shellfish blood.” Clearly, he still tried. Clearly, he was still active in the world. He just measured himself by his humility, by his indifference, more than he did by his achievement or status.

So must we. We can still try to climb the ladder of success. We can be powerful. We can live a nice life. The main thing is though, if you do this, be humble even so—humble even if you have achieved an impressive amount, even if you have done many impressive things.

P.S. April is Meditations Month here at Daily Stoic! This month only, get the How To Read Meditations (A Daily Stoic Digital Guide) for FREE when you buy our premium leatherbound edition of ​Meditations, unlocking access to the private community for Meditations discussion and an invitation to a LIVE Q&A call with Ryan Holiday when you purchase before April 26th. This is a rare opportunity to ask him your questions and go deep into the text that’s shaped his life more than any other—don't miss it!

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