Why Jerry Seinfeld Lives by the Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered whether or not come­di­ans are the philoso­phers of our time, we should now ask whether or not they, too, construct upon the work of oth­er philoso­phers. Few of at this time’s most promi­nent enjoyable­ny women and men dwell a philo­soph­i­cal life — or have cul­ti­vat­ed the tem­pera­ment nec­es­sary to dwell a philo­soph­i­cal life — extra pub­licly than Jer­ry Sein­feld. This has been sug­gest­ed by, amongst oth­er issues, a 2012 New York Instances Magazine­a­zine professional­file by Jon­ah Wein­er. “Sein­feld will nurse a sin­gle joke for years, amend­ing, abridg­ing and rework­ing it incre­males­tal­ly, to get the factor simply so,” writes Wein­er. “It’s sim­i­lar to cal­lig­ra­phy or samu­rai,” Sein­feld says. “I wish to make crick­et cages. You recognize these Japan­ese crick­et cages? Tiny, with the doorways? That’s it for me: soli­tude and pre­ci­sion, refin­ing a tiny factor for the sake of it.”

Or, as Sein­feld places it in the more moderen inter­view above with pod­forged­er Gra­ham Ben­siger, he needs to know what time it’s, however he needs much more to take the watch aside with the intention to study the way it works. This has change into his life­lengthy quest, in his professional­fes­sion­al are­na of com­e­dy and along with his oth­er obses­sions as nicely.

Cul­ti­vat­ing each his underneath­stand­ing and him­self has entailed indulging his style for dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions, or somewhat, chal­lenges with­in what he calls the appro­pri­ate “brack­et of strug­gle.” At this level within the jour­ney, he’s discovered what might at first sound like a sur­pris­ing information: sec­ond-cen­tu­ry Roman emper­or Mar­cus Aure­lius, whose guide the Med­i­ta­tions, together with Epicte­tus’ Enchirid­ion and the writ­ings of Seneca the Youthful, con­sti­tute the core texts of Sto­icism.

To dwell Sto­ical­ly within the Aure­lian sense is to bear at all times in thoughts that, as Sein­feld places it, “each­factor that you simply’re wor­ried about goes to be gone like that. The peo­ple which might be crit­i­ciz­ing you, they’re going to be gone. You’re going to be gone. All this hand-wring­ing, wor­ry, and con­cern over ‘How are peo­ple view­ing me,’ ‘Some­one stated some­factor dangerous about me’ — and also you get so upset about it — is wast­ed time and ener­gy.” Within the view of Mar­cus Aure­lius, “your solely focus ought to be on get­ting guess­ter at what you’re doing. Give attention to what you’re doing, get guess­ter at what you’re doing. Each­factor else is a com­plete waste of time.” It’s not laborious to underneath­stand why such a world­view would attraction to the person Sarah Sil­ver­man, within the Instances Magazine­a­zine Professional­file, calls “the ulti­mate crafts­man” amongst come­di­ans.

In addi­tion to the Med­i­ta­tions, Sein­feld additionally depends on the prac­tice of actu­al med­i­ta­tion, which he cred­its with professional­vid­ing him each the phys­i­cal and males­tal ener­gy nec­es­sary to maintain pur­su­ing his targets into his sev­en­ties. “Med­i­ta­tion is like if I stated to you, ‘I’m going to wish you to get within the scorching tub as soon as a day, and simply sit there for 5 min­utes. May you try this? That’s pret­ty simple. Med­i­ta­tion is even eas­i­er than that.” Exer­cise is the oppo­web site, because it “takes extra effort than any­factor,” however it’s change into simply as impor­tant part of his life, the three keys to whose suc­cess he enu­mer­ates as fol­lows: “Tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, raise weights, espres­so.” One likes to imag­ine that, had Mar­cus Aure­lius put in a Mar­zoc­co up on Pala­tine Hill, he’d have loved a number of pictures by­out the day too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­cus Aure­lius’ 9 Guidelines for Liv­ing a Sto­ic Life

What’s the Cope with Pop Tarts? Jer­ry Sein­feld Explains Easy methods to Write a Joke

Jer­ry Sein­feld Deliv­ers Com­mence­ment Handle at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty: You Will Want Humor to Get Via the Human Expe­ri­ence

Sein­feld, Louis C.Ok., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

How Sein­feld, the Sit­com Well-known­ly “About Noth­ing,” Is Like Gus­tave Flaubert’s Nov­els About Noth­ing

The Sto­ic Wis­dom of Roman Emper­or Mar­cus Aure­lius: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Quick Movies

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the creator of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.