John Masters, Author at Deep Something

Practicing Memento Mori: Learning to Live by Remembering Death

October 19, 2025October 20, 2025 B. John 165 Views 0 Comments Memento Mori, Stoicism, mortality, mindfulness, aging, emotional well-being, Laura Carstensen, Gratitude

We spend much of our lives pretending we have endless time. The Stoics knew better. Memento Mori—remember that you will die—was not a grim command but a call to live awake. Modern science now confirms what they intuited: when people recognize their days are finite, they become calmer, kinder, and more grateful.

In this new essay, I explore how ancient philosophy and modern psychology meet on common ground. From Seneca to Stanford researcher Laura Carstensen, the message is the same: awareness of mortality can make life richer, not smaller. Read Memento Mori: Learning to Live by Remembering Death.

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Stoic Practices: Contemplation of Nature

October 15, 2025October 15, 2025 B. John 82 Views 0 Comments Marcus Aurelius, hurricane, Seneca, contemplation of nature, Tampa Bay, environmental ethics, balance, humility, Climate Change, Stoicism

Stoicism teaches that nature is both teacher and law. In a time of rising seas and stronger storms, the lesson feels urgent: to live according to nature now means to remember that we are not outside it.

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Rehearsing Virtue in Small Daily Acts

October 13, 2025October 13, 2025 B. John 199 Views 0 Comments The Portico, Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Massimo Pigliucci, Tampa, virtue, compassion, daily practice, empathy

At The Portico café in downtown Tampa, I paused my work to sit with a man who had just been released from prison. He was unsure what to do next. I offered coffee, listened, and waited until the manager returned to connect him with help. It wasn’t a big deal, but later, I realized how much peace there can be in simply giving someone attention for a few minutes.

In the past, I invited my widowed neighbor to join my husband and me for our usual Taco Tuesday after she told me her daughter had been declared cancer-free. She later said how much the evening meant to her. Those simple moments, one with a stranger, one with a friend, reminded me that compassion is a practice. The Stoics taught that virtue is built not in theory but in repetition, through the small choices that make us steady and kind.

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Stoic Practices: Morning Reflection

October 12, 2025 B. John 206 Views 0 Comments Marcus Aurelius, mindfulness, morning reflection, meditation, daily practice, philosophy, Stoicism

The mornings came first as exercise. Two years ago, I started walking for my health, beginning with just a few blocks at a time. I carried extra weight then, 187 pounds of it, to be exact. The plan was simple: move more, eat better, and feel less tired. What I didn’t expect was that those early walks would become something much deeper. They began with music, everything from Sousa marches to soft piano covers. Later, I switched to audiobooks to make the walks more productive. But as my life began to shift in other ways, I started walking in silence. In that quiet, something changed. My thoughts began to stretch out and organize themselves.

It became a kind of morning meditation. And like most good accidents, it only later revealed its purpose. I realized that what I was doing was practicing a Stoic exercise—the morning reflection. The Stoics began each day by preparing the mind for the world ahead, anticipating difficulties, and setting a moral compass. Two thousand years later, science affirms what they knew: that a few deliberate minutes at dawn can redirect an entire day.

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Stoic Practices: Attention to the Present Moment

October 6, 2025October 16, 2025 B. John 110 Views 0 Comments Journaling, attention, mindfulness, presence, modern distraction, Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius

Attention does not have to be grand or mystical. It can be a high-school band, thirty students and a tuba, finding themselves perfectly in tune for a few minutes. It can be a quiet morning at The Portico, folding a tablet closed to listen to a man just released from prison. The Stoics called this prosoche—the discipline of attention—and believed it was the core of a good life. When we show up fully in the small moments, we discover what Marcus Aurelius meant when he said the present is the only thing that truly belongs to us.

Modern life makes this harder. Our phones, notifications, and meetings tempt us to drift through our days in fragments. Yet each act of genuine presence pushes back against that fragmentation. In a distracted world, paying attention is an act of resistance and of love. It is how we reclaim the texture of our days and rediscover the quiet pulse of a life well lived.

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Living the Last Best Moment – A Stoic Practice

September 30, 2025September 29, 2025 B. John 181 Views 0 Comments Joan Didion, Charles Taylor, attention, Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, present moment, Thich Nhat Hanh

Greta Gerwig once said, “You don’t know when the last time of something happening is. You don’t know what the last great day you’ll spend with your best friend is. You’ll just know when you’ve never had that day again.” That line has echoed in me ever since I first heard it. It captures both the sweetness and fragility of the present moment.
The Stoics knew this well. Marcus Aurelius warned against drifting into tomorrow, reminding himself that life is lived only in the day at hand. Seneca told us that we waste time as if it were endless. For them, attention to the present was not a poetic thought. It was survival. It was also the way to live a life worth remembering.
I think of an afternoon long ago with my friend Jim, shooting pool at his parents’ house. Or a fall day on a golf course with my friend Mike, pausing to look over Moss Lake together. Neither seemed extraordinary at the time. Yet they have stayed with me as “last great days.” The lesson is clear: if I want to live fully, I must live here, in this moment, as if it could be the last best one.

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Stoic Practices: Role Models

September 26, 2025October 5, 2025 B. John 403 Views 0 Comments Stoicism, Harvey Milk, Leadership, Marcus Aurelius, Resilience, role models, Gandhi, virtue, John Lewis, justice

The Stoics believed that we learn virtue through example. Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself as if he were a friend, modeling how to live by holding himself accountable to an imagined mentor. Seneca pointed to Cato as a guide. Epictetus told his students to picture a sage. This practice of role models is simple but powerful: we ask, “What would this person do?” and in answering, we shape our own choices.

For me, role models have been both personal and public. My mother, a nurse for thirty-six years in our local schools, cared for generations of children and called them “my kids.” She held our family together after Dad’s untimely death and lived a life of quiet service that rippled through our community. My band director, Donald Deal, taught discipline and teamwork that lasted far beyond the music hall. Rev. Dr. R. Earle Rabb showed courage in welcoming all God’s children into his church. And figures like John Lewis, Harvey Milk, and Mahatma Gandhi remind me that justice, hope, and service are lived realities, not abstractions. To practice role models is to remember that we are guided by others—and that we, too, may be the model someone else is following.

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Stoic Practices: Journaling

September 25, 2025 B. John 534 Views 0 Comments Stoicism, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Journaling, daily reflection, Anne Frank, self-examination

Journaling has been with me, on and off, for nearly forty-five years. On some days, the entries were little more than chores and frustrations. On other days, they carried the weight of loss, joy, or change. Whatever the tone, the act itself has always mattered. To pause, to write, to take stock is how I come to see myself more clearly. Marcus Aurelius did the same. His Meditations were not written for us, but for himself. They were reminders, small reckonings. Nearly two thousand years later, they are still read because the practice of setting words against the day is timeless.
In our age, the tools are different. My notebooks have become apps, and now even conversations with ChatGPT. Yet the heart of it is unchanged. To journal is to notice: gratitude, struggle, hope. To admit when I’ve fallen short. To celebrate when I’ve grown. Others across history, such as Augustine, Montaigne, Thoreau, Anne Frank, and Virginia Woolf, all wrote for themselves first, and their private pages later guided generations. We may never write for the world, but the habit still shapes us. Journaling is not about being profound. It is about being honest. And honesty, practiced day by day, is the soil of wisdom.

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Hope in the Ripples

September 23, 2025September 23, 2025 B. John 761 Views 1 Comment Legacy, Hope, interconnectedness, justice, community

When 150 people filled the hall at Hyde Park United Methodist Church, the room carried more than a discussion of housing, immigration, education, and inclusion. It carried hope. The kind that comes when people realize their voices matter more when joined together. The Stoics referred to this as sympatheia, the understanding that our lives are intricately woven into a larger fabric.
That same truth also lives in smaller, quieter ways. My mother’s 36 years as a school nurse left ripples she never saw. Children who learned, grew, and passed her care forward to their own families. Hope is born in those ripples. It is sustained when we draw our circles of concern closer, strengthen the hive, and trust that even small acts of justice will carry further than we can measure.

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Grief in Pieces

September 16, 2025September 17, 2025 B. John 1406 Views 0 Comments death, Memento Mori, grief, Memory

Grief often comes in pieces. It’s not only the heavy silence of a funeral or the first night alone. It returns later, quietly, when you reach for the phone to call your mother and remember she is gone. It returns when you read something that your best friend would have laughed at, and for a moment you think, “I can’t wait to tell him,” before the memory settles in.

The Stoics knew this ache. They did not command us to shoulder through grief without feeling. They taught instead that grief itself proves the depth of our love, and that while it must be acknowledged, it must not hold us captive. When paired with the framework of the five stages of grief and the echoes of Christian and Eastern wisdom, Stoic practice helps us carry loss with dignity and live more fully in the time we are given.

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Friendship and Impermanence

September 11, 2025September 12, 2025 B. John 1874 Views 0 Comments Impermanence, Friendship, Memory, Gratitude, Loss, Reflection, Pierre Hadot

Friendships are among life’s most unpredictable gifts. Some arrive for only a brief season, while others feel like they’ll last forever. Yet nothing is promised. A letter from an old college friend recently reminded me of this truth with painful clarity: he chose silence, not because of anger, but because life had drained him of the energy to stay connected. His message closed the door on our relationship, and with it came both relief and grief. Relief that I had not harmed the friendship, grief that its time had ended.
The Stoics teach us that everything we hold dear is on loan from fortune and will one day be reclaimed. That includes the people we love and the friendships that sustain us. Loss, they say, is not theft but the return of what was never fully ours. To see relationships this way doesn’t erase sorrow, but it reshapes it. Gratitude can take the place of clinging, and memory can remain as a reminder of both the gift and the impermanence of friendship.

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