Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered whether come­di­ans are the philoso­phers of our time, we must now ask whether they, too, build upon the work of oth­er philoso­phers. Few of today’s most promi­nent fun­ny men and women live a philo­soph­i­cal life — or have cul­ti­vat­ed the tem­pera­ment nec­es­sary to live a philo­soph­i­cal life — more pub­licly than Jer­ry Sein­feld. This has been sug­gest­ed by, among oth­er things, a 2012 New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file by Jon­ah Wein­er. “Sein­feld will nurse a sin­gle joke for years, amend­ing, abridg­ing and rework­ing it incre­men­tal­ly, to get the thing just so,” writes Wein­er. “It’s sim­i­lar to cal­lig­ra­phy or samu­rai,” Sein­feld says. “I want to make crick­et cages. You know those Japan­ese crick­et cages? Tiny, with the doors? That’s it for me: soli­tude and pre­ci­sion, refin­ing a tiny thing for the sake of it.”

Or, as Sein­feld puts it in the more recent inter­view above with pod­cast­er Gra­ham Ben­siger, he wants to know what time it is, but he wants even more to take the watch apart in order to learn how it works. This has become his life­long quest, in his pro­fes­sion­al are­na of com­e­dy and with his oth­er obses­sions as well.

Cul­ti­vat­ing both his under­stand­ing and him­self has entailed indulging his taste for dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions, or rather, chal­lenges with­in what he calls the appro­pri­ate “brack­et of strug­gle.” At this point in the jour­ney, he’s found what could at first sound like a sur­pris­ing guide: sec­ond-cen­tu­ry Roman emper­or Mar­cus Aure­lius, whose book the Med­i­ta­tions, along with Epicte­tus’ Enchirid­ion and the writ­ings of Seneca the Younger, con­sti­tute the core texts of Sto­icism.

To live Sto­ical­ly in the Aure­lian sense is to bear always in mind that, as Sein­feld puts it, “every­thing that you’re wor­ried about is going to be gone like that. The peo­ple that are 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 said some­thing bad about me’ — and you get so upset about it — is wast­ed time and ener­gy.” In the view of Mar­cus Aure­lius, “your only focus should be on get­ting bet­ter at what you’re doing. Focus on what you’re doing, get bet­ter at what you’re doing. Every­thing else is a com­plete waste of time.” It’s not hard to under­stand why such a world­view would appeal to the man Sarah Sil­ver­man, in the* Times Mag­a­zine Pro­file*, calls “the ulti­mate crafts­man” among come­di­ans.

In addi­tion to the Med­i­ta­tions, Sein­feld also relies on the prac­tice of actu­al med­i­ta­tion, which he cred­its with pro­vid­ing him both the phys­i­cal and men­tal ener­gy nec­es­sary to keep pur­su­ing his goals into his sev­en­ties. “Med­i­ta­tion is like if I said to you, ‘I’m going to need you to get in the hot tub once a day, and just sit there for five min­utes. Could you do that? That’s pret­ty easy. Med­i­ta­tion is even eas­i­er than that.” Exer­cise is the oppo­site, since it “takes more effort than any­thing,” but it’s become just as impor­tant a part of his life, the three keys to whose suc­cess he enu­mer­ates as fol­lows: “Tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, lift weights, espres­so.” One likes to imag­ine that, had Mar­cus Aure­lius installed a Mar­zoc­co up on Pala­tine Hill, he’d have enjoyed a few shots through­out the day too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­cus Aure­lius’ 9 Rules for Liv­ing a Sto­ic Life

What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jer­ry Sein­feld Explains How to Write a Joke

Jer­ry Sein­feld Deliv­ers Com­mence­ment Address at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty: You Will Need Humor to Get Through the Human Expe­ri­ence

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

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

The Sto­ic Wis­dom of Roman Emper­or Mar­cus Aure­lius: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Short Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­inMarshall writes and broad­cas**ts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities* as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro.* Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.