Episode Details

Maybe you don’t see yourself as an artist, just like Socrates didn’t see himself as an athlete, but maybe you are. According to Mikel Jollett, the founder of the band The Airborne Toxic Event and the author of a fascinating and haunting memoir about his troubled childhood, we have to “take our pain and make it useful. That’s what it means to be an artist.” His own art came from growing up in a cult his mother had joined, then living with her series of messed up husbands, struggling with addictions, getting in trouble at school, not knowing what he ought to do with his life. But all this struggle ultimately shaped him and in turn shaped the art he would make.

Marcus Aurelius wrote about how we turn our obstacles into fuel, we convert the impediments to action into new opportunities for action. That’s art, that’s sports, that’s philosophy. It’s a highly skilled thing—it’s certainly not easy. Still, it’s the only way.

-

P.S. Building the skill to take the challenges life throws at you and transform them into something useful takes practice. That’s why we created the Daily Stoic Challenge Deck, full of actionable daily challenges for you to push and develop yourself year round. Bundle your pack with the Challenge Deck Vol. II and save—available over at the Daily Stoic Store!

If you want to do more reading on these topics, we highly recommend Dying Everyday by James Romm (and we have a podcast with him on this topic). 

Listen Now