Who Was The Tough One? | Role Models
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Who was the tough one? Just think about how tough he had to be to get through all of that. The flood, the famine, the plague, the coup attempt, the wars, his failing health, burying not one but nine children. Just think of what it must have been like for Marcus Aurelius.

how he could have kept going, how he could have gotten out of bed in the morning. It's almost unimaginable, as we said recently. But you know what else we're not imagining? How it must have been for his wife, Faustina. She bore those children. Her husband was gone for years at a time. She had to nurse him through his chronic health crises. She had to worry what would become of herself and her family when his failing health led to that coup.

She had to do this as people spread baseless rumors about her infidelity and loyalty.

Seneca was forced to commit suicide by Nero. But what terror awaited Paulina, his wife, spared as she was by Nero's order, her life in Nero's hands on a daily basis? We talk about Rutilius and Musonius accepting their exile with a shrug. There is no mention of what became of their wives. Did they have to go too? Were they left behind?

We don't talk about the slights and the condescension that they would have had to put up with as the weaker sex. We don't talk about them having to find creative outlets for their mind and interests in a society where so much was closed off to them. We don't talk about accepting the powerlessness and injustice and reality of this life as

Although Epictetus could have certainly related, we don't talk about the fear of being raped or impregnated, which at best meant incredible pain and very realistically meant death. So it's worth asking who was actually more heroic? Who was actually the tough one in these relationships? Who was the true stoic?

And actually, we have a really good video. We just did this deep dive into some of the most badass and impressive stoic women in history. As you can imagine, some people got a little upset about that, but I think it's one of the best videos we did. If you don't subscribe to the Daily Stoic YouTube channel, you should. We also post a lot of the podcast episodes there, which you're welcome to watch also.

Role models. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by me, Ryan Holiday. Anywhere books are sold, including The Painted Porch, my bookstore at thepaintedporch.com.

Adoption was a widespread practice in Roman society, especially the senatorial class, and as a provision for imperial succession. Marcus Aurelius was himself the adopted son of the emperor Antoninus Pius, who himself was adopted by the emperor Hadrian so that Marcus could one day succeed them both to the purple. While Seneca was never adopted, his brother Novatus was, becoming Gio, who in the New Testament refuses to press charges against St. Paul. But

But Seneca liked to look at the phenomenon of adoption the other way around, saying that we can always choose whose children we want to be. For him, Cato, the towering, resolute Stoic who railed against Julius Caesar in defense of the Republic, was always standing by in his mind. The first book of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, in fact, is a catalog of all the people that Marcus had learned from and the lessons he had taken from their lives.

So this week, take a minute to think of the models that you can follow, wise and admirable people that you can measure yourself against. We like to say that we don't get to choose our parents, Seneca said, that they were given to us by chance. Yet truly, we can choose whose children we'd like to be. That's in On the Brevity of Life. But then in Moral Letter, Seneca said, we can remove most sins if we have a witness standing by as we are about to go wrong. The soul should have someone it can respect.

by whose example it can make its inner sanctum more inviolable. Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts. I think for me, this idea of choosing whose children you want to be is great, right? Whether you had amazing parents or the world's worst parents, you can also choose to be the children of the greats of history. We did a Daily Dad email where Bruce Springsteen is talking about being an ancestor or a ghost.

You know, who are the ghosts that haunt you and who are the ancestors that inspire you? And how can you choose to follow in the right footsteps? For me, Robert Greene is kind of an adopted father. He's about

my father's age, but he's who I want to be as a person in many ways. Professionally, he's deeply inspiring to me. The way even that he has spent so much time and energy and patience shaping me into the writer that I became, that in and of itself has been inspiring and is an example I try to follow in. So I've never met Marcus Aurelius. I'm not related to Seneca. I have no lineage that

puts me back into ancient Rome with Epictetus, but we can still be the descendants of these people. We can still be their children. James Baldwin was famously talking to his nephew and he said, you come from steady peasant stock, people who built the railroads, people who escaped via the underground railroad, people who responded to the blows of fate in life with dignity and poise and creativity and perseverance.

Now, is this literally true? Does he know for a fact about the railroads or the underground railroads? No. But we choose what tradition we hail from. We choose whose child we want to be by the example that we follow, by the heroes we give ourselves in our mind. And that's what today's entry is about. And I hope you take a minute to think about whose footsteps you're following in and what example you are setting so that perhaps someday someone else might choose to be adopted by you.

Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

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