You've read the books. You know what Marcus Aurelius would do. But when life gets hard, the philosophy disappears. This podcast is for people who want to close the gap between knowing Stoicism and actually living it. New episodes weekly. Start with the free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: https://www.stoicchallenge.co/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-description&utm_content=global
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How do you enjoy something fully while staying ready to lose it? Epictetus answers with one of his best images, the sailor who goes ashore to gather shells and water but keeps an ear out for the captain’s call. In this episode I work through Chapter 7 of the Enchiridion and what that analogy asks of us.
You can never live without the promise of death, and you can never own something without the promise of loss. So if we know this, how can we reduce unnecessary suffering? The first thing is to recognize impermanence. Imagine that you are traveling home on an aeroplane and stop halfway for a connecting flight. While you are waiting for your next flight at the airport, you may go and eat a nice meal or peruse the perfume shops. We've all done this, it can be fun to explore airports. But you must not forget about your next flight. You have to keep looking at the airport screens to know what gate to go to and when. Sometimes you don't find out till the last minute. When your flight is called, you have to stop whatever you are doing and head to the right gate. You know this, you accept this, this is part of the process of traveling. But if you don't do this, if you decide that you really want to keep buying things in the airport, you may be stranded in the wrong country until you eventually get deported. Why would I have you think about this? Well, this is a good analogy for life. Life itself is a journey. We are born, we explore, and we die. When we are in the connecting airport, waiting for our next trip, instead of getting a nice meal and picking up some perfume, we maybe pick up a wife and a child. Maybe we get a nice house. This is great. We should definitely enjoy this. But when the next flight comes, we must be prepared to leave them behind. This is part of the process, a natural process, and ideally we should learn to become okay with it. To go back to the analogy of walking around the airport waiting for our next flight, if we are getting older, if we are in the airport for a long time, we have a long layover, we might wander a bit too far, we might buy too many things in life. We might get married, we might have children, we might get a house, we might get a good career, we might have grandchildren. And then when death summons us back to our next flight, we resist it. We have become too comfortable in this airport. And so the takeaway here is that it is possible to truly enjoy your life to the full, to enjoy all of the things that life brings you, all of the deep, intimate connections and material possessions, while also recognizing that part of the deal you are agreeing to is to one day let them go when the time comes. By doing this and thinking about this regularly, you will be able to let them go with more ease and appreciate them while they're here.
