Let's talk quick about what got me here.
I was having a bad day. The worst day. Well, for me at least. Screaming match with my sister. Screaming match with my parents. Screaming match with my neighbor (who threatened to have my 7-year-old daughter arrested...so I don't feel too bad about that), and fight with my wife. Just....just a bad day.
Feelings and reactions that were just not sustainable. But each of them, I was forced into. I really had no choice.
Until I realized that I obviously did. I had a choice and I made a choice. And I made bad choices.
I used to work with a guy, Mike Caswell, who, back in 2020, told me that he liked to follow Stoicism. I told him I have no idea what he is talking about. One of Mike's friends from high school who he was on the track team with was an author on Stoicism. So I looked up Ryan Holiday and found that he had written some books on the topic. I used the Blinkist app to get those books into 15 minute snippets and wet my whistle just enough.
After watching some of his YouTube videos on The Daily Stoic, I decided to get a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. And I remember sitting in bed reading at the bottom right of one of the pages about externalities, impressions, judgments, and reactions. And that no outside event can force me to respond in any way. It is my choice on how I respond.
I stopped reading and just looked up from the book. That was it. That awareness changed me as a person, a father, a husband, a son, a brother....you name it. It hasn't made me perfect and there are times I can think of when I should have acted better. But in these years, those instances are exponentially fewer than what they would have been without this framework and line of thinking.
Better than I did on that one day.
The tactics are simple: Be aware (internal). Be good (external).
The execution -- not so simple. Hence, the reminders.
Death is the biggest fear of them all, and learning to face your own death is the ultimate form of facing your fears.
— – Mo Gawdat, Solve for Happy
Meaning is possible even in spite of suffering. But to suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
— – Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
"Alright but I worry about how I will talk to him. He might say something gauche."
— "But you have practice in speaking, in reason, in intelligence, in fortitude."
Rads Take
Death. Suffering. Worry. Fear.
Courage. Wisdom. Meaning. Reason. Discipline.
Problem and solution all teed up nicely in each of these randomly selected quotes (out of 597 at this point! I've been busy!).
Let's truly interweave this thing. Is there meaning in death? Do we sometimes suffer through our dealings with others? Can we reason our way through a march toward the inevitable?
I'd say with gratitude, yes, yes we can.
I believe that appreciation and gratitude is more powerful internally than folks give it credit for. In Solve for Happy, Mo says that the happiness equation is solved when our perception of the world is aligned with our expectations. If we do not expect to have our lives be perfect - which they will never, ever be - then, when we encounter that imperfection, we will not be disappointed. We will be grateful that things turned out the way that they did. And we will be happy.
'Comparison is the thief of joy.' If we spend all day comparing ourselves to folks that have more than us instead of considering how lucky we are to have the things we have (like A/C, wifi, a roof), we will never achieve that level of happiness that we seek. Peter Diamandis (I consider him the Godfather of Wonder -- look him up if you don't know him) says that a healthy person has a million wishes. But a sick person has just one.
That healthy person who is aware of the positive things in his or her life experiences that gratitude on a daily, or best case, hourly basis. Then, he is playing with house money and the fruits of his labor that he spends intentionally pursuing excellence are just gravy.
So to bring it back to death, suffering, and the inevitable daily fools :-), be grateful for the time that we have. For the little things. For the kids that are yelling at each other upstairs right now. They will eventually be in a world of headphones and college and parenthood. So today, appreciate those obstacles that, if we are present and grateful, will make us stronger as we overcome them.
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Thanks for reading to this point and checking out what's going on in my brain. If you have any feedback about this newsletter (longer, shorter, better, more quotes, less preachy, where's the unsubscribe button), let me know at chris@theradstoic.com. Feedback is a gift!