| There has always been fear—fear that tyrants or fate would take something away from us. The ancients worried about being sent into exile. They worried that disease would kill someone they loved. They worried an earthquake could swallow up their house. And these were reasonable worries: Marcus Aurelius buried multiple children. Musonius Rufus was sent away multiple times. Pompey disappeared under a volcano! Today, these worries remain with us and they remain real. A vindictive politician can take away your livelihood. A senseless virus can take away your parents. A hurricane or a forest fire could wipe your neighborhood off the map. In this way we are all vulnerable, in this way we are all, to borrow a phrase from Joan Didion that sounds like it came from Seneca, "hostages to fortune." Yet, there is something that can't be taken from us by even the strongest strong man or the most unlucky of external events. Nothing can take from us what we have had. No one can take this present moment from us, because—in the attempt—the present moment becomes the past. What we have right now, that is ours, not just now but forever. And what are we doing with it? Not using it but worrying about it. We have our family right now. We have our job right now. We have the dream house right now. We have it in our minds forever too—the memories we made there, the things we accomplished, the love we felt. Let us not waste it. Let us not let it waste away. Let us not be afraid.
This Week On The Daily Stoic Podcast: You could be doing anything with your life…so why are you choosing this? Historian and bestselling author Rutger Bregman joins Ryan to question everything we tend to believe about success, work, and impact. They explore why many "prestigious" careers might actually be pointless, how a few regular people pulled off one of the biggest moral wins in history, and why meaningful work rarely looks like what society celebrates. *** | 
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