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The Daily Stoic
They’re Not Thinking About You At All | The Dangerous Comfort of Half Measures
00:15:35
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Welcome to the daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice and wisdom, into the real world. They're not thinking about you at all. Awful people have always been with us. Rome had its Neros and its Caligulas and its Tiberiuses and its Commoduses. Cruel people have always been with us. Incompetent leaders have always been with us. People have always been trying to undermine our institutions, trying to turn us against each other, fill the hole in their soul with power or fame or influence. And there's no question that these people do enormous damage in the process. Rome burned under Nero. Catiline sent a mob to overthrow an election he lost. These people kill and destroy and waste. So, yeah, it makes us angry, it worries us, it consumes a lot of our attention and energy. It's worth pointing out that these people who we spend so much time thinking about, they don't spend one second of their lives thinking about us. Do you think Nero even knew that Epictetus existed? Certainly he did not spend his dinner saying, can you believe what this Epictetus guy is doing? Certainly he did not gossip or speculate or complain about him. Which is why Epictetus understood that the key to his sanity and his freedom. And in the end, triumphing over someone like Nero meant focusing less on them and much more about himself. And his critical question resounds to us today. Is this something that's up to me or not? That isn't to say that Epictetus or any of the Stoics were apathetic. It's just that they knew the trap that is confusing emoting about a problem with doing something about a problem. They knew how easily bad people could consume every waking second at the expense of both our happiness and our effectiveness. Much of what happens in empires, in the world, in politics, is not up to us. Our opportunity to influence it in the modern world at least, comes during elections, at protests, et cetera. Day to day, though, it's only our individual actions that are up to us. How we treat people, how we run our business, what we think about. We must make sure that we are not allowing bad people to make us bad people. Governments can take a tyrannical turn, but we need not cede control of our thoughts and moods. Let them be awful. Let them waste the opportunities they have to do actual good in this world. Just don't let them waste our opportunities, too. Our power lays in the agency we have over the only empire we do control, that is ourselves. Look, this is the time of year. We try to get our health in order, try to get back on track, try to have better habits, put better things into our bodies. So maybe you're thinking about supplements. If you are, you know, it's a confusing space. There's a lot of brands out there. It's a low trust category. Not a lot of regulation, a lot of scammers, a lot of big unpronounceable ingredients is hard. And that's where momentous comes in. 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Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. When the world feels crazy, when things are falling apart, it's always nice to go backwards, to turn to the ancients. And today I wanted to bring you a little Seneca. This is letter 22 from Seneca's famous letters he was writing to his friend Lucilius. This one's called on the Futility of Halfway Measures. And this letter Seneca is arguing that the problem isn't knowing what to do, it's the unwillingness to let go. It's the putting stuff off. It's those half commitments. It's that being halfway in. It's the the busyness that is a form of procrastination and avoidance. And I think it is a timely message as always. This comes from Tim Ferriss Audio, my friend, who produced a wonderful audio edition of of Seneca's Letters. Like if you read the Penguin Classics edition, which is the one I usually rave about, it's not all the letters. So Tim went got all the letters edited and it's a wonderful audio companion. You can get it for free as a PDF if you go to Tim Blog Senica and you can grab the Dao of Seneca as an audiobook on Audible. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But let's listen to Seneca. Here we go.
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On the Futility of Halfway Measures. You understand by this time that you must withdraw yourself from those showy and depraved pursuits, but you still wish to know how this may be accomplished? There are certain things which can be pointed out only by someone who is present. The physician cannot prescribe by letter the proper time for eating or bathing. He must feel the pulse. There is an old adage about gladiators that they plan their fight in the ring as they intently watch something in the adversary's glance, some movement of his hand, even some slight bending of his body, gives a warning. We can formulate general rules and commit them to writing as to what is usually done or ought to be done. Such advice may be given not only to our absent friends, but also to succeeding generations. In regard, however, to that second question, when or how your plan is to be carried out, no one will advise. At long range we must take counsel in the presence of the actual situation. You must be not only present in the body, but watchful in mind, if you would avail yourself of the fleeting opportunity. Accordingly, look about you for the opportunity. If you see it, grasp it, and with all your energy and with all your strength devote yourself to this task to rid yourself of those business duties. Now listen carefully to the opinion which I shall offer. It is my opinion that you should withdraw from either from that kind of existence, or else from existence altogether. But I likewise maintain that you should take a gentle path that you may loosen, rather than cut the knot which you have bungled so badly in tying, provided that if there shall be no other way of loosening it, you may actually cut it. No man is so faint hearted that he would rather hang in suspense forever, then drop once for all. Meanwhile, and this is of first importance, do not hamper yourself. Be content with the business into which you have lowered yourself, or, as you prefer to have people think, have tumbled, there is no reason why you should be struggling on to something further. If you do, you will lose all grounds of excuse, and men will see that it was not a tumble. The usual explanation which men offer is wrong. I was compelled to do it. Suppose it was against my will. I had to do it. But no one is compelled to pursue prosperity at top speed. It means something to call a halt, even if one does not offer resistance, instead of pressing eagerly after favoring fortune. Shall you then be put out with me, if I not only come to advise you, but also call in others to advise you? Wiser heads than my own men, before whom I am wont to lay any problem upon which I am pondering? Read the letter of Epicurus, which appears on this matter. It is addressed to Idomeneus. The writer asks him to hasten as fast as he can, and beat a retreat before some stronger influence comes between, and takes from him the liberty to withdraw. But he also adds that one should attempt nothing except at the time when it can be attempted suitably and seasonably. Then when the Long sought occasion comes. Let him be up and doing. Epicurus forbids us to doze when we are meditating. Escape. He bids us hope for a safe release from even the hardest trials, provided that we are not in too great a hurry before the time, nor too dilatory when the time arrives. Now, I suppose you are looking for a Stoic motto also. There is really no reason why anyone should slander that school to you on the ground of its rashness. As a matter of fact, its caution is greater than its courage. You are perhaps expecting the Section to utter such words, as it is base to flinch under a burden. Wrestle with the duties which you have once undertaken. No man is brave and earnest if he avoids danger, if his spirit does not grow with the very difficulty of his task. Words like these will indeed be spoken to you. If only your perseverance shall have an object that is worth while, if only you will not have to do or to suffer anything unworthy of a good man. Besides, a good man will not waste himself upon mean and discreditable work, or be busy merely for the sake of being busy. Neither will he, as you imagine, become so involved in ambitious schemes that he will have continually to endure their ebb and flow. Nay, when he sees the dangers, uncertainties and hazards in which he was formerly tossed about, he will withdraw, not turning his back to the foe, but falling back little by little to a safe position from business. However, my dear Lucilius, it is easy to escape if only you will despise the rewards of business. But we are held back and kept from escaping by thoughts like these. What then shall I leave behind me these great prospects? Shall I depart at the very time of harvest? Shall I have no slaves at my side? No retinue for my litter? No crowd in my reception room? Hence, men leave such advantages as these with reluctance. They love the reward of their hardships, but curse the hardships themselves. Men complain about their ambitions as they complain about their mistresses. In other words, if you penetrate their real feelings, you will find not hatred but bickering. Search the minds of those who cry down what they have desired, who talk about escaping from things which they are unable to do without. You will comprehend that they are lingering of their own free will in a situation which they declare they find it hard and wretched to endure. It is so, my dear Lucilius. There are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery. If, however, you intend to be rid of this slavery, if freedom is genuinely pleasing in your eyes and if you seek counsel for this one purpose, that you may have the good fortune to accomplish this purpose without perpetual annoyance. How can the whole company of Stoic thinkers fail to approve your course? Zeno, Chrysippus, and all their kind will give you advice that is temperate, honourable, and suitable. But if you keep turning round and looking about in order to see how much you may carry away with you, and how much money you may keep to equip yourself for the life of leisure, you will never find a way out. No man can swim ashore and take his baggage with him. Rise to a higher life with the favor of the gods. But let it not be favor of such a kind as the gods give to men, when with kind and genial faces they bestow magnificent ills, justified in so doing by the one fact that the things which irritate and torture have been bestowed in answer to prayer. I was just putting the seal upon this letter, but it must be broken again in order that it may go to you with its customary contribution, bearing with it some noble word. And lo, here is one that occurs to my mind. I do not know whether its truth or its nobility of utterance is the greater. Spoken by whom, you ask? By Epicurus, for I am still appropriating other men's belongings. Everyone goes out of life just as if he had but lately entered it. Take anyone off his guard, young, old, or middle aged, you will find that all are equally afraid of death and equally ignorant of life. No one has anything finished because we have kept putting off into the future all our undertakings. No thought in the quotation given above pleases me more than that it taunts old men with being infants. No one, he says, leaves this world in a different manner from one who has just been born. That is not true, for we are worse when we die than when we were born. But it is our fault and not that of nature. Nature should scold us. What does this mean? I brought you into the world without desires or fears, free from superstition, treachery, and the other curses. Go forth as you were when you entered. A man has caught the message of wisdom if he can die as free from care as he was at birth. But as it is, we are all aflutter at the approach of the dreaded end. Our courage fails us, our cheeks blanch, our tears fall, though they are unavailing. But what is baser than to fret at the very threshold of peace? The reason, however, is that we are stripped of all our goods. We have jettisoned our cargo of life and are in distress, for no part of it has been packed in the hold. It has all been heaved overboard and has drifted away. Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long. Farewell.
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Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank. You.
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