You Can’t Stop Here | No Blame, Just Focus

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. You can't stop here. When Junius Rusticus handed the future emperor of Rome a book, It came with an implication. A true philosopher, a true leader, Rusticus insisted, could not be satisfied just getting the gist of something.

They had to understand it inside and out. None of the lessons that Marcus Realis took from Epictetus the book that Rusticus gave him in his mid twenties, would have been possible without first listening to this lesson. He not only inhaled the book, he clearly went over it over and over until it seeped into his very soul. That's why meditations is filled with quotes from Epictetus.

That's why Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man in the world, managed to stay sane, despite the inherent insanity of his position. Now maybe you've read Epictetus, maybe you've been meaning to, but chances are you haven't treated it like Marcus did, like Rusticus expected, like Epictetus deserves. In these writings, actually, Epictetus's lectures were recorded by another student named Arian, we have the life experiences of a man who spent thirty years as a slave, We also get his first hand familiarity with temptation and corruption and vanity, having an owner who worked in Nero's court. What Epictetus learned and went on to teach others was profound and enduring.

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