November 30th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Follow the Logos

 "The person who follows reason in all things will have both leisure and a readiness to act - they are at once both cheerful and self-composed."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.12b

November 29th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - You're Going To Be OK

"Don't lament this and don't get agitated."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.43 

November 28th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - It's Not On Them, It's On You

 "If someone is slipping up, kindly correct them and point out what they missed. But if you can't, blame yourself - or no one."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.4

November 27th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - The Pleasure of Tuning Out the Negative

 "How satisfying it is to dismiss and black out any upsetting or foreign impression, and immediately to have peace in all things."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.2

November 26th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - The Altar of No Difference

 "We are like many pellets of incense falling on the same altar. Some collapse sooner, others later, but it makes no difference."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.15

November 25th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Funny How That Works Out

 "As for me, I would choose being sick over living in luxury, for being sick only harms the body, whereas luxury destroys both the body and soul, causing weakness and incapacity in the body, and lack of control and cowardice in the soul. What's more, luxury breeds injustice because it breeds greediness."

~ Musonius Rufus, Lectures, 20.95.14-17

November 24th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Train To Let Go of What's Not Yours

 "Whenever you experience the pangs of losing something, don't treat it like part of yourself but as a breakable glass, so when it falls you will remember that and won't be troubled. So too, whenever you kiss your child, sibling, or friend, don't layer on top of the experience all the things you might wish, but hold them back and stop them, just as those who ride behind triumphant generals remind them they are mortal. In the same way, remind yourself that your precious one isn't one of your possessions, but something given for now, not forever . . ."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.24.84-86a

November 23rd Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Attachments Are the Enemy

 "In short, you must remember this - that if you hold anything dear outside of your own reasoned choice, you will have destroyed your capacity for choice."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 4.4.23

November 22nd Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - The Glass Is Already Broken

 "Fortune falls heavily on those for whom she's unexpected. The one always on the lookout easily endures."

~ Seneca, On Consolation to Helvia, 5.3

November 21st Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Once Is Enough, Once Is Forever

 "A good isn't increased by the addition of time, but if one is wise even for a moment, they will be no less happy than the person who exercises virtue for all time and happily passes their life in it."

~ Chrysippus, quoted by Plutarch in Moralia: "Against the Stoics on Common Conceptions"

November 20th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Behold, Now As Ever

"If you've seen the present, you've seen all things, from time immemorial into all of eternity. For everything that happens is related and the same."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.37 

November 19th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Maxims From Three Wise Men

 "For any challenge we should hold three thoughts at our command:
'Lead on God and Destiny,
To that Goal fixed for me long ago,
I will follow and not stumble; even if my will
is weak I will soldier on.'"

~ Cleanthes

"Whoever embraces necessity count as wise, skilled in divine matters."

~ Euripides

"If it pleases the gods, so be it. They may well kill me, but they can't hurt me."

~ Plato's Crito and Apology

Cited by Epictetus, Enchiridion, 53

November 18th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Four Habits of the Stoic Mind

 "Our rational nature moves freely forward in its impressions when it:

1. accepts nothing false or uncertain;

2. directs its impulses only to acts for the common good;

3. limits its desires and aversions only to what's in its own power;

4. embraces everything nature assigns to it."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.7

November 17th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Judge Not, Lest . . .

 "When philosophy is wielded with arrogance and stubbornly, it is the cause for the ruin of many. Let philosophy scrape off your own faults, rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 103.4b-5a

November 16th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Hope and Fear Are the Same

 "Hecato says, 'cease to hope and you will cease to fear.' . . . The primary cause of both these ills is that instead of adapting ourselves to present circumstances we send our thoughts too far ahead."

~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 5.7b-8

November 15th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Everything Is Change

 "Meditate often on the swiftness with which all that exists and is coming into being is swept by us and carried away. For substance is like a river's unending flow, its activities continually changing, and causes infinitely shifting so that almost nothing at all stands still."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.23

November 14th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - You Choose The Outcome

 "He was sent to prison. But the observation, 'he has suffered evil,' is an addition coming from you."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.8.5b-6a

November 13th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Never Complain, Never Explain

 "Don't allow yourself to be heard any longer griping about public life, not even with your own ears!"

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.9

November 12th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - The Strong Accept Responsibility

 "If we judge as good and evil only the things in the power of our own choice, then there is no room left for blaming gods or being hostile to others."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.41

November 11th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - It's Not The Thing, It's What We Make Of It

 "When you are distressed by an external thing, it's not the thing itself that troubles you, but only your judgment of it. And you can wipe this out at a moment's notice."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.47

Thank you, Captain Jack Sparrow, Stoic philosopher!

November 10th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Always the Same

 "Think by way of example of the times of Vespasian, and you'll see all these things: marrying, raising children, falling ill, dying, wars, holiday feasts, commerce, farming, flattering, pretending, suspecting, scheming, praying that others die, grumbling over one's lot, falling in love, amassing fortunes, lusting after office and power. Now that life of theirs is dead and gone . . . the times of Trajan, again the same . . . "

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.32

November 9th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - All Is Fluid

 "The universe is change. Life is opinion."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.3.4b

November 8th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Actors In A Play

 "Remember that you are just an actor in a play, playing a character according to the will of the playwright - if a short play, then it's short; if long, long. If he wishes you to play a beggar, play even that role well, just as you would if it were a cripple, a honcho, or an everyday person. For this is your duty, to perform well the character assigned to you. That selection belongs to another,"

~ Epictetus, Enchiridion, 17

November 7th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - How To Be Powerful

 "Don't trust in your reputation, money, or position, but in the strength that is yours - namely, your judgments about the things that you control and don't control. For this alone is what makes you free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and powerful."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 3.26.34-35

November 6th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Someone Else Is Spinning The Thread

 "If the breaking day sees someone proud,

The ending day sees them brought low.

No one should put too much trust in triumph,

No one should give up hope of trials improving.

Clotho mixes one with the other and stops

Fortune from resting, spinning every fate around.

No one has had so much divine favor

That they could guarantee themselves tomorrow.

God keeps our lives hurtling on,

Spinning us in a whirlwind."

~ Seneca, Thyestes, 613

Seeing the reversals of fortune as states that had seemed on Election Day to go for Trump now flipped for Biden, this seems a very appropriate meditation. But even now, of course, the course of fate could reverse again, and as more votes are counted, things could change. But for now - the breaking day saw Trump proud, the ending day sees him brought low, as Georgia and Pennsylvania have both flipped to Biden!

November 5th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - A Higher Power

 "This is the very thing which makes up the virtue of the happy person and a well-flowing life - when the affairs of life are in every way tunes to the harmony between the individual divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe."

~ Chrysippus, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius in Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.88

November 4th Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Not Good, Nor Bad

 "There is no evil in things changing, just as there is no good in persisting in the same state."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.42

November 3rd Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Following the Doctor's Orders

 "Just as we commonly hear people say the doctor prescribed some one particular riding exercises, or ice baths, or walking without shoes, we should in the same way say that nature prescribed someone to be diseased, or disabled, or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone's healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny."

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.8

Personal note: This is a hard one. It sounds suspiciously like it is saying that a person deserves or even needs any apparent hardships that befall. One needs to really understand a number of aspects of Stoic philosophy to appreciate what this is really talking about. If one accepts that virtue is the only true good, and vice the only true evil, it follows that pain, disease, etc. are not true evils. They are not preferred, but they are not truly bad things. Furthermore, if one accepts the concept of providence - the idea that the universe is divinely inspired and divinely ordered - then apparent hardships (e.g., illness) that befall someone are not actually bad, and were divinely appointed besides. It is very uncomfortable to tell someone who feels that they are suffering that their pain is not real pain, and that they deserve it anyway! But this is not really what Stoicism teaches, or what Marcus is saying. But he is saying that what happens to a person happens, and cannot be altered after the fact - what has been appointed by fate cannot be altered. It is ordered to aid our destiny, in that sense. And while it is not so much that our suffering was sent to teach us a lesson, the Stoic would certainly say that we can choose to learn from "dispreferred" events. In short, I feel like this one is very easy to misunderstand and misinterpret if one is not deeply steeped in Stoicism - I'll post it anyway, but it's not for beginners!   

November 2nd Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Binding Our Wishes To What Will Be

"But I haven't at any time been hindered in my will, nor forced  against it. And how is this possible? I have bound up my choice to act with the will of God. God wills that I be sick, such is my will. He wills that I should choose something, so I do. He wills that I reach for something, or something be given to me - I wish for the same. What God doesn't will, I do not wish for."

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1.89

November 1st Reading from The Daily Stoic (Round 2) - Accepting What Is

 "Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will - then your life will flow well."

~ Epictetus, Enchiridion, 8

"It is easy to praise providence for anything that may happen if you have two qualities: a complete view of what has actually happened in each instance and a sense of gratitude. Without gratitude what is the point of seeing, and without seeing what is the object of gratitude?"

~ Epictetus, Discourses, 1.6.1-2