by Ryan Holiday
A person who makes selfish choices or acts contrary to their conscience will never be at peace. A person who sits back while others suffer or struggle will never feel good, or feel that they are enough, no matter how much they accomplish or how impressive their reputation may be.
A person who does good regularly will feel good. A person who contributes to their community will feel like they are a part of one. A person who puts their body to good use—volunteering, protecting, serving, standing up for—will not need to treat it like an amusement park to get some thrills.
Virtue is not an abstract notion. We are not clearing our minds and separating the essential from the inessential for the purposes of a parlor trick. Nor are we improving ourselves so that we can get richer or more powerful.
We are doing it to live better and be better.
Every person we meet and every situation we find ourselves in is an opportunity to prove that.
It’s the old Boy Scout motto: “Do a Good Turn Daily.”
Some good turns are big, like saving a life or protecting the environment. But good turns can also be small, Scouts are taught, like a thoughtful gesture, mowing a neighbor’s lawn, calling 911 when you see something amiss, holding open a door, making friends with a new kid at school. It’s the brave who do these things. It’s the people who do these things who make the world worth living in.
Marcus Aurelius spoke of moving from one unselfish action to another—“only there,” he said, can we find “delight and stillness.” In the Bible, Matthew 5:6 says that those who do right will be made full by God. Too many believers seem to think that belief is enough. How many people who claim to be of this religion or that one, if caught and investigated, would be found guilty of living the tenets of love and charity and selflessness?
Action is what matters.
Pick up the phone and make the call to tell someone what they mean to you. Share your wealth. Run for office. Pick up the trash you see on the ground. Step in when someone is being bullied. Step in even if you’re scared, even if you might get hurt. Tell the truth. Maintain your vows, keep your word. Stretch out a hand to someone who has fallen.
Do the hard good deeds. “You must do the thing you cannot do,” Eleanor Roosevelt said.
It will be scary. It won’t always be easy, but know that what is on the other side of goodness is true stillness.
Think of Dorothy Day, and indeed, many other less famous Catholic nuns, who worked themselves to the bone helping other people. While they may have lacked for physical possessions and wealth, they found great comfort in seeing the shelters they had provided, and the self-respect they’d restored for people whom society had cast aside. Let us compare that to the anxiety of the helicopter parents who think of nothing but which preschool to enroll their toddler in, or the embezzling business partner who is just one audit away from getting caught. Compare that to the nagging insecurity we feel knowing that we are not living the way we should or that we are not doing enough for other people.
If you see fraud, and do not say fraud, the philosopher Nassim Taleb has said, you are a fraud. Worse, you will feel like a fraud. And you will never feel proud or happy or confident.
Will we fall short of our own standards? Yes. When this happens, we don’t need to whip ourselves, as Clamence did, we must simply let it instruct and teach us, as all injuries do.
That’s why twelve-step groups ask their members to be of service as part of their recovery. Not because good deeds can undo the past, but because they help get us out of our heads, and in the process, help us write the script for a better future.
If we want to be good and feel good, we have to do good.
There is no escaping this.
Dive in when you hear the cry for help. Reach out when you see the need. Do kindness where you can.
Because you’ll have to find a way to live with yourself if you don’t.
ON TO THE FINAL ACT
As a well-spent day brings a happy sleep, so a well-employed life brings a happy death.
—LEONARDO DA VINCI
It was AD 161 and the emperor Antoninus Pius knew he was going to die. He was seventy-four years old and he could feel the life leaving his body. A fever had taken hold and his stomach pained him. With his last bit of strength, he called his adopted son Marcus Aurelius into the room and began the process of transferring the state over to him. When this task was complete, Antoninus turned to his royal audience and spoke his final word—a word that would echo down through not just the life of his son but all of history, down even to us today: aequanimitas.
A few hundred years before, in roughly 400 BC, Buddha accepted with equal equanimity that he too would soon pass from this earth. He was a little older than Antoninus, but he had not certified a successor, for although he was born a prince, he’d renounced his patrimony in the pursuit of enlightenment. Still, he could tell that his students were worried about losing him, about how they would continue their journey without his guidance and love.
“You may be thinking,” he said to them, “‘The word of the Teacher is now a thing of the past; now we have no more teacher.’ But that is not how you should see it. Let the Dhamma and the Discipline that I have taught you be your Teacher when I am gone.”
Then, just as Antoninus had done, he prepared for his final words. His last chance for passing on wisdom to the people he loved, to the people he knew would face all the difficulties that life throws at us. “All individual things pass away,” he said. “Seek your liberation with diligence.”
Then Buddha fell into a deep sleep and never woke again.
It is fitting that between the deaths of these two titans came Epicurus, the philosopher whose unique way of living almost perfectly bridges the Eastern and Western schools. In 270 BC, he also had the self-awareness to know he did not have much more time. “On this happy day, which is the last day of my life,” Epicurus began his final letter, “I write the following words to you.” Despite the considerable pain he felt, his body racked by blockages in the bladder and bowels, he wrote instead of the joy in his heart, and the fond recollections he had of conversations with his friends. Then he got to the purpose of the letter—a set of instructions for the care of a promising pupil he wanted to make sure was looked after. Within a few hours and without much fanfare, Epicurus would join Buddha and Antoninus in eternity, in death.
Three approaches. Different, but in the end the same.
Clear.
Calm.
Kind.
Still.
Each of the domains we have studied addressed in their own way.
The mind.
The soul.
The body.
The mental. The spiritual. The physical.
Three legs in a stool. Three points along a perfect circle.
None of us are long for this world. Death hangs over us all, whether we notice or not, whether we believe it or not.
Tomorrow, we could discover we have cancer. Two weeks from now, a heavy branch could fall from a tree and take us with it. The prognosis is terminal for each and every person and has been from the moment we were born. Our heart beats without fail for an uncertain amount of time, and then one day, suddenly, it is still.
Memento mori.
This is a fact that, perhaps more than anything else, is responsible for incredible amounts of anxiety and distress. It’s scary to think that we will die. As is the fact that we cannot know for certain what will happen when death comes, whenever that is. Is there such a thing as heaven? Or hell? Is death painful? Is it nothingness, a dark backward abysm of time?
Seneca reminded himself that before we were born we were still and at peace, and so we will be once again after we die. A light loses nothing by being extinguished, he said, it just goes back to how it was before.
The denial of this simple, humbling reality—the denial of death—is why we
attempt to build monuments to our own greatness, it’s why we worry and argue so much, why we chase pleasure and money and cannot be still while we are alive. It’s ironic that we spend so much of our precious time on earth either impotently fighting death or futilely attempting to ignore the thought of it.
It was Cicero who said that to study philosophy is to learn how to die.
Most of this book has been about how to live well. But in so doing, it is also about how to die well. Because they are the same thing. Death is where the three domains we have studied in these pages come together.
We must learn to think rationally and clearly about our own fate.
We must find spiritual meaning and goodness while we are alive.
We must treat the vessel we inhabit on this planet well—or we will be forced to abandon it early.
Death brings an end to everything, to our minds, our souls, and our bodies, in a final, permanent stillness.
So we end this book there as well.
AFTERWORD
It’s getting to be early evening now, and about time for me to get up from the computer, having made some progress on the pages you just read. Years ago I got myself out of the busy city and set up my family here, on a little spread outside town, with a picture of Oliver Sacks and his “No!” sign hanging above my desk. Now that my writing day is done, I’ve got work to do on the farm—chickens to feed, some donkeys to sneak carrots to, and fences to inspect. Not unlike the plot of that Zen poem about the taming of the bull, my neighbor’s longhorn has gotten onto my property, and I need to go find him.
My young son helps me load some tools into the back of the ATV—“the tractor, the twahktor!” he calls it—and then I hug him and head down the levee, through to the middle pasture, and back down by the creek. The fence there has started to weaken, from the elements and the explorations of the wayward bull, and I spend the next hour grabbing and pinching T-post clips. You take the clip and wrap it around the back of the post, grab the end with the pliers, hooking it over the wire and twisting it tight so it can’t come loose. Wrap, grab, hook, twist. Wrap, grab, hook, twist.
No thinking, just doing.
The sweat gets going quickly in Texas, and my leather gloves are shades darker almost as soon as I start. But by the end the fence is tight. I tell myself it will hold—or so I hope. Next up is moving the hay, backing the buggy up to the round bale, letting the arm fall over top of it, and then gunning the engine of the ATV. It catches, teeters, flips up, and falls over, two thousand pounds of food now lying flat on the trailer. By the time I’ve driven to where I need to drop it, the cows have gotten wise to the sound and come running to investigate. I line it up with the hay ring, back up again, and watch it come tumbling off the back. With the knife in my pocket, I cut off the netting and drop the heavy steel hay ring over it to prevent waste. The cows begin to eat, yelling in appreciation, jostling with each other for their place at the bale.
With them properly distracted, it’s time for me to go find this bull. I heard him when I was working and suspect he’s over in the back corner of the front pasture. I find him there, a ton or more of muscle and horns. I’m a little frustrated. This is not my problem, though my neighbor seems not to mind that this keeps happening. I behold him there, as the poem says, but keep my distance. Not just because I don’t want to be gored, but because in rushing this process before, in getting him worked up, I’ve run the bull right through a barbed-wire fence—a costly reminder of the risks of impatience.
The key is to nudge him in the direction you want to go, to eliminate the other options and then get him moving. It’s got to feel like it’s his idea. Otherwise, he’ll panic and get angry. And the problem goes from bad to worse.
So I just stand there, resting against some cedar, looking up at the first croppings of the Violet Crown—the Texas sunset that settles over Austin—that is coming toward the horizon. In this moment, I am at peace. It doesn’t matter how tough things have been lately. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world. My breathing is slowing down. There is no social media here. The outrage factory that has become the news cycle can’t reach me. Neither can my clients or business partners—there’s no reception in these woods. I am far from this manuscript I have been working on. Far from my research and my notes, from my comfortable office and the craft that I love. And here, far from my work, the story of Shawn Green, which I read months ago, and what he was really teaching us slips from my subconscious into the front of my mind. I get it now. I get what he was after.
Chop wood, carry water. Fix fences, load hay, seize the bull.
My mind is empty. My heart is full. My body is busy.
Attamen tranquillus.
Ryan Holiday
Austin, Texas
WHAT’S NEXT?
Each morning, I write a meditation inspired by Stoic and other ancient philosophy for DailyStoic.com. You can follow along with nearly two hundred thousand other people by signing up at:
DailyStoic.com/email
Or if you’d like some reading recommendations—nourishing, inspiring, challenging books of the sort that wisdom is made from—you can sign up for a monthly list at:
RyanHoliday.net/reading-list
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One of the simplest and most accessible entry points into stillness is gratitude. Gratitude for being alive, for the lucky breaks you’ve gotten, and for all the people in your life who have helped you. Each morning, I try to take some time to think about these very things, but for the most part, such thanks remain private. With this little space allowed to me here, I’d like to thank everyone who helped make this book possible—my wife, Samantha, first and foremost. I am grateful for her guidance and support and natural stillness, which I learn from constantly. My son, Clark, who went on many long walks with me as I worked out the words in this book. My sister, Amy, whose poise and strength as she battles cancer has deeply moved and humbled me. I am grateful to my agent and collaborator, Steve Hanselman, who helped not only with translations but with the shaping of the idea. Nils Parker, who has been a sounding board for my writing ideas for over a decade now, and Brent Underwood for all his help marketing and building my platform. Thank you to Hristo Vassilev for all his important research and fact-checking help. Niki Papadopoulos, my editor, and the rest of the Portfolio team at Penguin Random House—thank you for all the work on all my books. To the logos that brought all these people and factors together . . .
I should also thank my donkeys and cows and goats (for their lessons on being, not doing), but there are too many to name. I’m also grateful for the chance to workshop many of the ideas in this book on Thought Catalog, Observer, Medium, and DailyStoic.com
My final and most serious gratitude goes out to the thinkers and philosophers whose ideas make up this book. It would not have been possible without them, but more important, their insights and writings have made my life better. I’m grateful too to the heroes (and villains) in the stories written here, as their all-too-human successes and failures both inspire and caution anyone in search of happiness, excellence, and stillness. My own search is nowhere near complete, but their example has helped me make a few inches on a journey that—God(s) willing—is only just beginning.
SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
My aim for this book is for it to be as lean and portable as possible. Since there is limited room here and no desire to leave any valuable source out, anyone who wants a bibliography for this book can email:
[email protected]
For those looking to do more reading on Eastern or Western philosophy, I recommend the following:
Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius (Modern Library)
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, by Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden (Hackett)
Letters of a Stoic by Seneca (Penguin Classics)
The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin Classics)
The Art of Happiness, by Epicurus (Penguin Classics)
The New Testament: A Translation, by David Bentley Hart (Yale University Press)
Buddha, by Karen Armstrong (Penguin Lives Biographies)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ryan Holiday is one of the world's foremost thinkers and writers on ancient philosophy and its place in everyday life. He is a sought-after speaker, strategist, and the author of many bestselling books including The Obstacle Is the Way; Ego Is the Enemy; and The Daily Stoic. His books have been translated into over 30 languages and read by over two million people worldwide. He lives outside Austin, Texas, with his family.
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* In his next two games, Green would hit three more home runs. He was 11 for 13 in three games with seven home runs. On the last home run he broke his bat, which now sits in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
* Check out The Daily Stoic Journal, published by Portfolio, if you’re looking for a journal with prompts.
* In 2015, a late-night talk show recorded a version performed by a cat.
* After the match, Steve Scott would marry his caddy and they would live happily ever after.