Think by way of example on 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

Ernest Hemingway opens his book The Sun Also Rises with a Bible verse: “One generation passeth, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever. The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down, and resteth to the place where he arose.” It was this passage, his editor would say, that “contained all the wisdom of the ancient world.”

And what wisdom is that? One of the most striking things about history is just how long human beings have been doing what they do. Though certain attitudes and practices have come and gone, what’s left are people—living, dying, loving, fighting, crying, laughing.

Breathless media reports or popular books often perpetuate the belief that we’ve reached the apex of humanity, or that this time, things really are different. The irony is that people have believed that for centuries.

Strong people resist this notion. They know that with a few exceptions, things are the same as they’ve always been and always will be. You’re just like the people who came before you, and you’re but a brief stopover until the people just like you who will come after. The earth abides forever, but we will come and go.

* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

The universe is change. Life is opinion.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.3.4b

In Plutarch‘s Life of Theseus, he describes how the ship of Theseus, an Athenian hero, was preserved by the people of Athens in battle-ready condition for many centuries. Each time a board decayed, it would be replaced until eventually every stick of wood in it had been replaced. Plutarch asks: Is it still the ship of Theseus, or is it a new one?

In Japan, a famous Shinto shrine is rebuilt every twenty-three years. It’s gone through more than sixty of those cycles. Is it one shrine, 1,400 years old? Or sixty consecutive shrines? Even the U.S. Senate, given its staggered elections, could be said to have never been fully turned over. Is it the same body formed in the days of George Washington?

Our understanding of what something is is just a snapshot—an ephemeral opinion. The universe is in a constant state of change. Our nails grow and are cut and keep growing. New skin replaces dead skin. Old memories are replaced by new memories. Are we still the same people? Are the people around us the same? Nothing is exempt from this fluidity, not even the things we hold most sacred.

* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

Remember that you are 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 the bigger, 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 you. That selection belongs to another.
—Epictetus, Enchiridion, 17

Marcus Aurelius didn’t want to be emperor. He wasn’t a politician who sought office, and he wasn’t a true heir to the throne. As far as we can tell from his letters and from history, what he really wanted was to be a philosopher. But the powerful elite in Rome, including the emperor Hadrian, saw something in him. Groomed for power, Marcus was adopted and put in line for the throne because they knew he could handle it. Meanwhile, Epictetus lived much of his life as a slave and was persecuted for his philosophical teaching. Both did quite a lot with the roles they were assigned.

Our station in life can be as random as a roll of the dice. Some of us are born into privilege, others into adversity. Sometimes we’re given exactly the opportunities we want. At other times we’re given a lucky break, but to us it feels like a burden.

The Stoics remind us that whatever happens to us today or over the course of our lives, wherever we fall on the intellectual, social, or physical spectra, our job is not to complain or bemoan our plight but to do the best we can to accept it and fulfill it. Is there still room for flexibility or ambition? Of course! The history of the stage is littered with stories of bit parts that turned into starring roles and indelible characters that were expanded in future adaptation. But even this begins with acceptance and understanding—and a desire to excel at what we have been assigned.

* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

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 us 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

In a scene in Steven Pressfield‘s classic novel about Alexander the Great, The Virtues of War, Alexander reaches a river crossing only to be confronted by a philosopher who refuses to move. “This man has conquered the world!” one of Alexander’s men shouts. “What have you done?” The philosopher responds, with complete confidence, “I have conquered the need to conquer the world.”

We do know that Alexander did clash with Diogenes the Cynic, a philosopher known for his rejection of what society prizes and, by extension, Alexander’s self-image. Just as in Pressfield’s fictional encounter, in Diogenes’s real confrontation with Alexander, the philosopher was more powerful than the most powerful man in the world—because, unlike him, Diogenes had fewer wants. They were able to look each other in the eye and see who really had control over himself, who had achieved the self-mastery required for real and lasting power.

You can have that too. It just means focusing inward on acquiring power rather than outward. As Publilius Syrus, himself a former slave, put it: “Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself!”

* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

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 in a whirlwind.
—Seneca, Thyestes, 613

The novelist Cormac McCarthy was living in a motel room when he heard a knock at the door. It was a messenger—he’d been awarded the MacArthur “genius” grant and $250,000. Unexpected events can be good as well as bad.

Who could dream of such an unexpected twist? Who but Clotho, one of the three Greek goddesses of fate, who “spins” the thread of human life? To the ancients, she was the one who decided the course of the events of our lives—some good, some bad. As the playwright Aeschylus wrote, “When the gods send evil, one cannot escape it.” The same was true for great destiny and good fortune.

Their resigned attitude might seem strange to us today, but they understood who was really in control (not them, not us!). No amount of prosperity, no amount of difficulty, is certain or forever. A triumph becomes a trial, a trial becomes a triumph. Life can change in an instant. Remember, today, how often it does.

* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

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 tuned to the harmony between the individual divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe.
—Chrysippus, Quoted In Diogenes Laertius, Lives Of The Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.88

In undergoing a twelve-step program, many addicts struggle most with step 2: acknowledging a higher power. Addicts often fight this one. At first they claim it’s because they’re atheists or because they don’t like religion or because they don’t understand why it matters.

But they later realize that this is just the addiction talking—it’s another form of selfishness and self-absorption. The actual language of the step is pretty easy to swallow: “[We] came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Subsequent steps ask the addict to submit and let go. The second step really has less to do with “god” than those other steps—the letting go. It’s about attuning to the universe and discarding the toxic idea that we’re at the center of it.

It’s no wonder that the Stoics are popular with those in twelve-step programs. It’s also clear that this wisdom is beneficial to us all. You don’t have to believe there is a god directing the universe, you just need to stop believing that you’re that director. As soon as you can attune your spirit to that idea, the easier and happier your life will be, because you will have given up the most potent addiction of all: control.

* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

There is no evil in things changing, just as there is no good in persisting in a new state.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.42

When people say change is good, they’re usually trying to reassure someone (or themselves). Because instinctively we view change as bad—or at least we’re suspicious of it.

The Stoics want you to do away with those labels altogether. Change isn’t good. The status quo isn’t bad. They just are.

Remember, events are objective. It’s only our opinion that says something is good or bad (and thus worth fighting against or fighting for). A better attitude? To decide to make the most of everything. But to do that you must first cease fighting.

* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman