The Importance of Passion in Happiness

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Love is the one emotion that forces you outside of yourself. Empathy, which is a word I'm afraid it's overused, is a major theme in the sublime. The ability to get inside the perspective of others and get inside their world is extremely powerful. But empathy is hard to write about because it's not something you can quantify. And we had this power as primates for hundreds of years without being able to speak each other with words. We're incredibly attuned to our own feelings but don't know how to verbalize them.

What new information could there have possibly been for Seneca, in 62 AD, when he finally broke with Nero? Nero had been deranged for years (as detailed in James Romm’s excellent book Dying Every Day). He had been blood thirsty for years, unfit for leadership since almost the beginning. Seneca knew better from the beginning–the man was a philosopher and historian and could not have been deceived for long.

We can sit here and judge. We can shake our heads in bafflement. But we really shouldn’t.

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And in todays Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan shares some of his favorite Stoic lessons passed on by his mentor, Robert Greene. You can watch the full video at youtube.com/watch?v=uhKrwkTp8as.

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