Not Throwing Away My Shot

My younger daughter is obsessed with Hamilton, the modern musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda about the “founding father without a father” Alexander Hamilton. Nonstop I hear it in my house, both in recordings and on her lips. 
 
It started with my older daughter a couple years ago when she began middle school, but now my younger child is the super-fan, reciting raps rapid-fire on the playground with a few other Hamilton-adoring kids. She said she learned to sing better from this effort and was excited to be cast as a lead in her school play, also a musical. She spent her special spending money ordering Hamilton t-shirts online. So yeah, it’s big around here.
 
There are some fringe benefits. I, too, love the mashup of hip-hop, rap, pop, jazz, big band, and dance hall music. After hearing the musical, my daughters and I have explored the history of this period further, learning more about the Revolutionary War and the foundation of the national bank, as well as the historical Hamilton. Both of my kids have aced a few history projects thanks to the inspiration provided by this Broadway production.
 
Now that my daughters have exposed me to the musical so much that I’ve memorized my fair share of songs, I can say that a number of the show's concepts support my life philosophy based on Stoicism. 
 
Aaron Burr, the lawyer and politician  who was Hamilton’s greatest rival, serves as the show’s narrator. In a musical about Hamilton, we expect to dislike Burr, but it’s far more nuanced. 
 
In the song “Wait for It,” Burr delivers a number of Stoic ideas, most notably this line: “I am the one thing in life I can control.”
 
The whole song is about self-control, in fact. Burr, unlike the frenetic, constantly moving Hamilton, is willing to wait for success, to wait for his destiny. (Unfortunately that destiny left him known primarily as Hamilton’s killer and as the loser in a presidential race.) 
 
Burr, like Hamilton, is also keenly aware that death is always lurking, unpredictably, for all of us, no matter our achievements or goodness:
 
“Death doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep living anyway
We rise and we fall
And we break
And we make our mistakes…”
 
The song creates sympathy for a man that you might otherwise despise. Burr is thoughtful, emotional, and very human, and he draws on Stoic ideas to stay balanced in a time of war and upheaval and impassioned rivalry.
 
Hamilton, too—though the most un-Stoic of men—is a very sympathetic and appealing character whose tremendous productivity is motivated by his impending sense of death and the potential for failure before he’s done. He puts it this way in “The Room Where it Happened”:
 
“God help and forgive me
I wanna build
Something that’s gonna
Outlive me…”
 
Hamilton’s character is summed up by the song “Not Throwing Away My Shot.” (Yes, there is a lot of irony there, given his final duel.)
 
Hamilton’s key idea: “Just act.” It’s not good to wait for someone else to make things right for you. Instead, go ahead and take action, and push for your point of view. You might just make history.

The script depicts Hamilton's main critique of Burr as centered around the idea that Burr lacks principles. He doesn't "stand for" anything, and politics has consumed him (I hear echoes of Epictetus' dislike of amoral politicians in this script).

Hamilton views Burr as an opportunist and supports another rival, Jefferson, for the presidency because "Jefferson has beliefs, Burr has none." That leads to their deadly last dispute.
 
Of course, Hamilton is also the story of a man who destroys himself because he lacks a specific virtue: Self-control.

He’s got a lot of courage and a keen sense of justice, but his wisdom fails him in a few important moments. The show demonstrates how his infamous extra-marital affair and angry sense of self-justification brings about his undoing in politics and in life. 
 
Sucked in by bad passions and insults, guilty over his son’s demise in a duel after receiving his unfortunate advice, Hamilton is not able to recover the sense of honor that he has lost. He seems obsessed with proving his own righteousness to others, especially his fiercest rivals. With an almost suicidal intent, he enters the duel with Burr that he doesn’t survive.
 
Despite Hamilton's ill-fated end, we can take away a few key ideas to live our own lives better.

1. "I’m not throwing away my shot…" to pursue a meaningful life, guided by the virtues: wisdom, justice, courage, and self-control. 🔥
2. Competition (like that of Burr and Hamilton) can be extremely destructive. We are social beings made to help each other. “I should have known the world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me,” Burr says with regret after shooting his rival. I used to be consumed by comparison and competition, negative emotional habits I felt I couldn’t change. Now I take charge of myself and stop 🛑 those thoughts in their tracks!
3. “I am the one thing in life I can control” is a vitally true idea. Epictetus would agree. 🌟
4. Act on your good moral intentions now—not in some distant future. 🏃🏻‍♀️ After all, we don’t know how much time is left, as Hamilton frequently points out. "I imagine death so much it feels like a memory. When's it going to get me?" he says. "I never thought I'd live past 20... We have to make this moment last." This message rings true to Stoic ideas. We must grab the present moment and live out our principles as best we can.
5. And for a little more inspiration: Stand up with confidence for what you think is right, and stick to the path you have chosen. “You got skin in the game, you stay in the game. But you don’t get a win unless you play in the game. You get love for it, you get hate for it. You get nothing if you wait for it." 💪