The Low Road Will Always Dog You | Why Marcus Aurelius Didn’t Become Nero

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. The low road will always dog you. That passage from Marcus Aurelius about how the impediment to action advances action, that what stands in the way becomes the way. Do you know what he was actually talking about specifically? It wasn't overcoming an injury or a layoff or financial collapse.

It wasn't about a reversal on the battlefield. He was talking about difficult people. He was saying that frustrating, infuriating, thoughtless people They are opportunities. When someone is a jerk to you, it's an opportunity to practice virtue and how you respond, by not being a jerk back, by forgiving them, by standing up for yourself, by empathizing with what they're going through.

Of course, when someone is being difficult, you're tempted to give it right back. You're tempted to go, oh, this is how we're behaving these days. This is what passes for acceptable behavior. But you shouldn't. On a recent episode of the podcast, we were talking with the novelist Maria Semple, who has this amazing book called Go Gentle, which is about a Stoic philosopher.

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