They Felt The Same Way As You | How To Remember Everything You Read

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 felt the same way as you. They were scared. They were nervous, they were frustrated, they were confused, they were tired. It's easy to think that the ancient Greeks and Romans were somehow very different than us, their lives far removed from our own.

Of course, what a great historian is able to do is make it clear how untrue that is. As John Meacham has said, our ancestors did not dwell in some land called history or the past. Like all of us, they dwelt in a vivid, living, chaotic present. Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and Cato were all concerned about their declining institutions. They stressed about new technology, they wondered if it was the beginning of the end of their country.

They dealt with wars and natural disasters and fads and trends. But unlike us, as we read about these historical events, they did not know how it would end. They did not know whether they were doing the right thing or not. They were taking it day by day, doing their best, which is all we can do, which is what we must do. Like them we have to keep showing up, keep serving, keep trying to do the right thing in difficult times.

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