Stoic Practices: Contemplation of Nature
A storm was slipping past Tampa out in the Gulf. The offshore winds were strong enough to pull the water out of the bay. I stood on Bayshore Boulevard, just blocks from my house, and watched as people walked a hundred yards into the muck of the exposed bottom. Boats leaned at odd angles, birds circled low over places that had been deep water only hours before. It was an astonishing display of the power of nature, quiet and almost orderly, yet absolute.
A year later, I was gone because another storm, Milton, was coming the other way. We evacuated before the surge, and when we came home, the yard was a tangle of limbs and palm fronds. Our house was dry, but just blocks away, people were dragging soaked carpets and water-damaged furniture to the curb. The same bay that once emptied had filled beyond its edge. There was no malice in it, no mercy either, only the world adjusting its balance.
Years before those storms, I lived in North Carolina. I still remember the whisper of snow falling through the trees, and the crunch under your feet as you walked through it. It muted every sound and wrapped the hills in stillness and a cool white blanket. In the mountains near Boone, waterfalls froze at the edges while the water kept moving underneath. That quiet world felt far from the Gulf’s sudden violence, yet the lesson was the same. Change is constant. Power can be gentle or fierce, but it always returns to balance.
The Stoics wrote that nature is both teacher and law. They saw every part of creation, including us, as belonging to one living order. To live well was to live in harmony with that order. That wisdom feels urgent now. Humanity has become powerful enough to disturb the balance we depend on. We strip forests, poison water, and fill the air with what it cannot absorb. Each hurricane, wildfire, and drought is a kind of reply.
We are proud of our mastery, yet we forget that we are guests. I’m reminded of a statement by Methodism’s founder, John Wesley. He wrote that God “placed you here not as proprietor but as steward.” It means our task is caretaking, not consuming.
The storms around Tampa are part of a larger pattern. The seas are warmer, the air holds more water, and every year the odds tilt toward disaster. It is easy to treat this as a tragedy alone, but it is also a truth revealed. We are witnessing, in real time, the cost of believing the world exists solely for our use. To live according to nature now means to remember that we are not outside it.
Marcus Aurelius reminded himself daily that everything that happens is in accord with nature. That belief was not passive acceptance but an invitation to humility. He saw himself as a citizen of a larger cosmos, subject to the same order that governs tides and seasons. We have mostly lost that sense of belonging. We build higher walls and stronger roofs, hoping to keep the world out, while the world keeps reminding us that we were never separate in the first place.
Stoicism does not ask us to despair. It asks us to act within what we can control and to accept what we cannot. We can reduce harm, rebuild wisely, and live more simply. When we fail to do those things, nature will reset the balance herself.
Our task is to align our will with what is right rather than what is easy.
Contemplating nature today means more than admiring sunsets or mountains. It means looking honestly at the damage we cause and choosing a different way to live. It means finding beauty in restraint and seeing stewardship as a form of virtue. The Stoics would call this living in agreement with reason, because reason teaches that every act has a consequence.
When I walk along Bayshore now, I watch the tide move in and out and try to hold both hope and humility. The water that once vanished could vanish again. The water that once rose could return. Both belong to the same order. The practice of contemplating nature is not about finding peace in scenery. It is about remembering the truth that Marcus knew in a palace and Seneca knew in exile: we are part of the whole, and the whole endures.
