Episode Details
Back to Episodes#70 - Enchiridion Ch 10: How to be The World's Best Wait-er, Virtue GPA's, The Art of Asking The Beautiful Question, & Buddhists at the Bus Stop
Description
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
In this episode of Modern Meditations, Bruce and JJ begin with Peter Thiel’s famous contrarian question: "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?"
Then the conversation turns to a quieter problem: what do you do when you have already done everything you can?
Drawing from Epictetus, a long wait for a bus, and the uncertainty surrounding a friend’s passport, Bruce explores a better question asked by Epictetus in the Enchiridion Book 10 for difficult moments:
What faculty does this situation require from me?
We then discuss a framework for thinking about life in terms of stocks and flows—what we are trying to build, what scarce resources we are spending, and whether our attention, energy, time, and emotional capacity are actually serving the things we care about.
Because more worry does not necessarily mean more love. More vigilance does not necessarily create more safety. And more effort does not always produce more progress.
Sometimes wisdom means acting decisively.
Sometimes it means courage, restraint, judgment, or patience.
And sometimes the task is simply to become the world's best wait-er.