Dying Every Day (Stoic Meditations)

Socrates described a strange experience at his trial. He said that since childhood, a divine sign had sometimes restrained him from doing something he was about to do. In Plato’s account, it offered no program for his life. It only warned him not to go on.

Socrates understood this restraint as divine. 

In the Apology, he says, "It always holds me back from what I am thinking of doing, but never urges me forward.”

The passage leaves us with a question about restraint. [...]

------

📺 DYING EVERY DAY (ON YOUTUBE):
https://www.youtube.com/@MeditationsforMortals

📮 DYING EVERY DAY (ON SUBSTACK):
https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

📷 DYING EVERY DAY (ON INSTAGRAM):
https://www.instagram.com/dyingeveryday.co/

ABOUT US:
Dying Every Day is a podcast and newsletter for mortals and curious minds. Become a member to support the project and gain access to The School for Mortals and its exclusive courses on the art of living. dyingeveryday.com | Remember to Live.

So what do you do when life feels like too much? 

Two philosophers give very different answers, and together they point to something you can actually do tonight. 

Kierkegaard and Epictetus can help us see which demands belong to the situation, which ones we’ve added ourselves, and what’s still worth doing when we can’t do everything. [...]

------

📺 DYING EVERY DAY (ON YOUTUBE):
https://www.youtube.com/@MeditationsforMortals

📮 DYING EVERY DAY (ON SUBSTACK):
https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

📷 DYING EVERY DAY (ON INSTAGRAM):
https://www.instagram.com/dyingeveryday.co/

ABOUT US:
Dying Every Day is a podcast and newsletter for mortals and curious minds. Become a member to support the project and gain access to The School for Mortals and its exclusive courses on the art of living. dyingeveryday.com | Remember to Live.

Think for a moment about something you want. 

Not something you need.

Something you want.

Perhaps more money. More recognition. A little more comfort.

Now imagine getting it.

How long before it simply becomes normal? [...]

------

📺 DYING EVERY DAY (ON YOUTUBE):
https://www.youtube.com/@MeditationsforMortals

📮 DYING EVERY DAY (ON SUBSTACK):
https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

📷 DYING EVERY DAY (ON INSTAGRAM):
https://www.instagram.com/dyingeveryday.co/

ABOUT US:
Dying Every Day is a podcast and newsletter for mortals and curious minds. Become a member to support the project and gain access to The School for Mortals and its exclusive courses on the art of living. dyingeveryday.com | Remember to Live.

We’re often told to question everything, seek the truth, and know ourselves. But how much questioning is useful? Is truth always good for us? And can we acknowledge our limitations without becoming bitter about them?

My friend Brandon Tumblin from The Strong Stoic returns for a conversation prompted by passages from Dostoevsky’s novels, using Julian Baggini’s How to Think Like a Philosopher as our starting point. We explore the difference between Stoic acceptance and the resentment of the Underground Man, whether being limited means being flawed, and why admitting we might be wrong can make room for growth.

The conversation moves from doubt and decision-making to the uncomfortable work of self-knowledge. Through The Truman Show, The Matrix, and an imagined workplace feedback exercise, we ask whether learning the truth always helps—and how much depends on our readiness to hear it.

We also consider the limits of language, the mystery of friendship, and the parts of ourselves that other people see more clearly than we do. We close by exploring how envy and certainty can push people apart, and how humility and curiosity might help us reconnect.

A question to carry with you: Where could a little less certainty make room for a better question? [...]

------

📺 DYING EVERY DAY (ON YOUTUBE):
https://www.youtube.com/@MeditationsforMortals

📮 DYING EVERY DAY (ON SUBSTACK):
https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

📷 DYING EVERY DAY (ON INSTAGRAM):
https://www.instagram.com/dyingeveryday.co/

ABOUT US:
Dying Every Day is a podcast and newsletter for mortals and curious minds. Become a member to support the project and gain access to The School for Mortals and its exclusive courses on the art of living. dyingeveryday.com | Remember to Live.

When does reading help us change, and when does it become a way to postpone the next step?

In this Dying Daily meditation, Thomas à Kempis and Epictetus help us examine the distance between understanding an idea and living it. Reading can clarify what a situation asks of us. But it cannot make the choice for us. [...]

------

📺 DYING EVERY DAY (ON YOUTUBE):
https://www.youtube.com/@MeditationsforMortals

📮 DYING EVERY DAY (ON SUBSTACK):
https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

📷 DYING EVERY DAY (ON INSTAGRAM):
https://www.instagram.com/dyingeveryday.co/

ABOUT US:
Dying Every Day is a podcast and newsletter for mortals and curious minds. Become a member to support the project and gain access to The School for Mortals and its exclusive courses on the art of living. dyingeveryday.com | Remember to Live.

You can end a busy day having focused intensely on things you would never have chosen as the center of your life. 

The messages were answered. The small dispute got another hour. The person you meant to call has gone to bed.

Now the day’s accomplishments look different beside what they displaced.

This is a different problem from distraction. [...]

------

📺 DYING EVERY DAY (ON YOUTUBE):
https://www.youtube.com/@MeditationsforMortals

📮 DYING EVERY DAY (ON SUBSTACK):
https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

📷 DYING EVERY DAY (ON INSTAGRAM):
https://www.instagram.com/dyingeveryday.co/

ABOUT US:
Dying Every Day is a podcast and newsletter for mortals and curious minds. Become a member to support the project and gain access to The School for Mortals and its exclusive courses on the art of living. dyingeveryday.com | Remember to Live.

Memento mori is a way to bring the important things back into the present. Through Montaigne and Seneca, this episode explores how remembering mortality can loosen our attachment to approval, interrupt postponement, and make room for a more deliberate life.

A simple evening practice: name what you are glad you did, notice what you regret delaying, and make one small repair.

Dying Every Day: practical philosophy for a finite life. [...]

------

📺 DYING EVERY DAY (ON YOUTUBE):
https://www.youtube.com/@MeditationsforMortals

📮 DYING EVERY DAY (ON SUBSTACK):
https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

📷 DYING EVERY DAY (ON INSTAGRAM):
https://www.instagram.com/dyingeveryday.co/

ABOUT US:
Dying Every Day is a podcast and newsletter for mortals and curious minds. Become a member to support the project and gain access to The School for Mortals and its exclusive courses on the art of living. dyingeveryday.com | Remember to Live.

A message arrives with fewer words than you expected. You read it again. The brevity begins to sound like irritation; the irritation becomes a judgment about your relationship. By the time you put the phone down, you are responding to a conversation that has not happened.

We live among events and our interpretations of them. The interpretations help us navigate. They also become increasingly difficult to distinguish from what we actually observed.
 

Epictetus makes a demanding claim about that relationship. [...]

------

📺 DYING EVERY DAY (ON YOUTUBE):
https://www.youtube.com/@MeditationsforMortals

📮 DYING EVERY DAY (ON SUBSTACK):
https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

📷 DYING EVERY DAY (ON INSTAGRAM):
https://www.instagram.com/dyingeveryday.co/

ABOUT US:
Dying Every Day is a podcast and newsletter for mortals and curious minds. Become a member to support the project and gain access to The School for Mortals and its exclusive courses on the art of living.

📮 Want more meditations for mortals? Sign up here: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back to Dying Every Day. This is Day 158.

You’ve read the advice. You’ve asked the people you trust. And you’re still looking.

Somewhere along the way, the search for information became a search for assurance. One asks the world a question. The other asks the world for a promise.

So how much do you need to know before you act? You’ll never know enough to be certain. But you can know enough to act with care. An oracle once called Socrates the wisest man alive. He spent years trying to prove it wrong. [...]

📮 Want more meditations for mortals? Sign up here: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back to Dying Every Day. This is Daying Daily.

You have been avoiding this thought.

Not consciously. Not with deliberate effort.

Simply by staying busy enough that it never quite surfaces. By treating awareness of death as something to manage—acknowledged briefly when unavoidable, then returned to its proper place at the far edge of consciousness, well away from the ordinary business of the day. 

We have even developed extraordinary technology to support this avoidance. 

The busyness, the noise, the endless scroll—all of it serves, among other things, to keep the biggest fact about human existence just below the level of genuine awareness. The Stoics thought this was exactly backward. [...]