How Many Examples Do You Need? | This Spring Activity Will Teach You Valuable Stoic Lessons
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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off

with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com. How many examples do you need? Given that he was a powerful head of state, a warrior, a brilliant man, you might think that most of the stories we have about Marcus Aurelius would be illustrations of these traits. Marcus Aurelius charging on the battlefield, Marcus Aurelius' razor-sharp wit, Marcus Aurelius' wise statesmanship,

And while we do have a few stories from his life that demonstrate these virtues, we also have a surprising amount of examples of him crying. Not crying out of fear or whining self-pity or because he didn't get something he wanted. That would not be very Stoic. But tears of sadness and love and compassion for which there is no Stoic exemption.

We've talked about three of these examples before, but in his new and excellent biography of Marcus Aurelius, which you can grab at the Painted Porch, Donald Robertson provides us another. Towards the end of Marcus Aurelius's life, he writes, the emperor found himself weeping over a letter informing him that a catastrophic earthquake had leveled a city in Turkey.

His tears soaked the parchment as he read, She is now a desert through which west winds blow.

The stereotype of the unfeeling stoic would, of course, not be moved by a roll call of plague victims, the death of a beloved tutor, the enormity of the imperial burden. But Marcus Aurelius was never that. He was a human being, someone who cared about others, someone who was in touch with himself and what he felt. He didn't stuff his emotions down, but process them and then proceeded to do his job, carrying on, as we have marveled many times, the

despite the sadness, despite the grief, despite the struggling under the burdens of life and leadership. And so must we. The simple things are the most wonderful things. We could plan this big, elaborate vacation. We could spend a bunch of money. But it's walking along a dirt road, picking blackberries that we have the most fun together as a family with.

We just went blackberry picking with our kids, which is one of my favorite things in the whole world. And I'm gonna give you some stoic parenting lessons that go along with it. The wonderful things in life are accessible to everyone. Some of my neighbors live in trailers. Some of them have thousands of acres.

but we all have access to this same free thing that the earth provides to us and that nature is a great equalizer and humbler of us in that sense. One of the things we talk about as we're picking the blackberries is that it's all going into a common pot, right? The Stoics talk about the common good over and over again. You might say it's a little socialistic or communistic, but we talk about how it doesn't matter who's getting more, we're in this together, right? We're collecting a bunch of blackberries so we can cook something together, so we can have a blackberry crumble or a blackberry cake.

tart or blackberry pie or blackberry tea or any of the things that we're going to make with it. We get to do that together. We're going to experience them together. Obviously, life is a little bit more complicated than that, but it's always important to remind your kids that we're in this together, that we're doing things together. Even if their younger brother isn't as good as picking as them or they're the best, it doesn't really matter because in the end, we share these things.

Being present is the most important thing. You could say that good parenting could be encapsulated in a single word, presence, right? If I'm on my phone, if we're distracted, if we're not watching them, all the good memories and moments that we have as people, as parents in this life,

come when we're present. My hands are all dirty and covered in thorns. To get what you want in life sometimes comes with costs. Seneca talks about paying the taxes of life gladly. He doesn't mean just the taxes you owe the government. He means if you want to pick blackberries, you're going to get stabbed with thorns. That you got to watch out for snakes. That there's going to be bugs. That if you don't put on sunscreen, you'll get a sunburn on the back of your neck. The idea that nothing is without cost in this life. We have to be aware of that.

One of my favorite Stoic lessons, they say don't expect figs in winter. The idea is that there's a time and season for things, that things come a certain way, and then it's foolish to expect figs in winter. It's also foolish to expect things from people when they're not ready. It's foolish to expect things from people that they're not capable of giving. When we're out picking blackberries like I just was with my kids, this is why my hands are filthy, I try to remind them of this lesson, right? We're picking blackberries, not figs, which was,

plant of the Greeks and the Romans. It's this idea that you can't expect this thing in late summer, in the depths of winter, right? That's not when its season is. And that to get the things you want in life, you have to be patient, you have to be ready, you have to understand the time and place for things. That's how life works. And it's a really important stoic lesson. The thing about blackberry picking also is that it gets us walking. I've said before that that

Although walking doesn't solve all your problems, I've yet to find a problem that's made worse by walking. Getting the kids outside, getting them moving, doing something that's stimulating and fun and challenging and messy, right? It makes us better. It makes them happier. It's just a great mood setter. You know, it's just wonderful to watch their curiosity, to watch their exploration, to watch them get good at this thing, right? You do it every year. You get a little better at it every year. And it's watching them acquire this skill,

The art of spotting them, of sensing which ones are ready and which aren't, right? Going faster, where they're going to grow, a sense of nature. Steve Rinella writes this great book about raising outdoor kids in an indoor world. And whenever I go blackberry picking, I think, this is what we're doing. We're raising outdoor kids, kids that aren't grossed out by stuff, kids that aren't afraid of thorns, kids that...

are curious, kids that are excitable, kids that understand the world around them, that can spot beauty in beautiful places, but also beauty in ordinary places. This is what you're trying to do as parents. You want an outdoor kid in an otherwise indoor world.

If you want to keep your stoicism journey going, well, that's the journey that I'm on. Every single day at this computer, I write one stoic-inspired email that I give away totally for free to people all over the world. There's no spam. You can unsubscribe at any time, and you can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email.

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