Stoic Practices: Friendship and Mentorship
The Company We Keep
I’ve always tried to take friendship seriously. I think of it as one of life’s quiet disciplines and, most important, a gift. It’s a practice that shapes character as surely as study or prayer. Seneca wrote, “No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone; you must live for another if you would live for yourself.”
When I look back, I see that the people who mattered most were not those who agreed with me or cheered me on, but those who stayed present through change. They are the ones who asked hard questions without judgment and who helped me hold a mirror to my own life.
Friendship, the Stoics taught, is not about escape or comfort. It is about honesty, mutual improvement, and virtue in action. A true friend doesn’t simply share our pleasures. They share our striving to live rightly.
Friends of Virtue
My friendship with Rick began in childhood and endured through decades of distance. We truly met in junior high band. We both played cornet until I switched to tuba. By high school, we were inseparable, known for mischief that never crossed into malice. He became a touchstone for humor, loyalty, and, later, courage.
Rick and I followed different paths after high school. He became a writer, among many other things. I pursued my own work, and yet we remained tethered. In time, he faced a degenerative eye disease and lost his sight. What struck me most was his acceptance of his disease, not resignation, but clarity. He once told me that blindness had sharpened his sense of gratitude. We talked often during those years, sometimes four or five times a week. His voice on the phone became a kind of mentorship in endurance.
The Stoics would have recognized Rick as a “friend of virtue.” Seneca urged Lucilius to “associate with those who are likely to improve you.” Rick did that for me. His humor, his faith in humanity, and his refusal to self-pity all modeled the Stoic ideal that adversity reveals character rather than erasing it.
When Rick died in 2020, I couldn’t attend his small service because of the pandemic. I still regret that. But he would have smiled at the absurdity of it. It would have been another bitter cucumber, as Marcus Aurelius would say. I’ve come to realize that the truest way to honor a friend like that is to live out what they taught you.
When Friendship Breaks
Not all friendships last. In college, I met Jeff P., who became like a brother to me. We took road trips, spent holidays together, and laughed through countless nights in the dorm. I eventually came out to him as gay, and he did not take it well. We have not spoken since.
For years, that silence felt like failure. I grieved the friendship and what it once meant to me. But time and reflection softened my view. Epictetus reminded his students, “When someone treats you badly or speaks ill of you, remember they act from their own impression of what is right.” That idea doesn’t excuse the pain, but it reframes it.
The Stoics believed friendship was a mutual journey toward virtue, not ownership of one another’s beliefs or comfort. In that light, I can see Jeff’s reaction as part of his own struggle, not a verdict on mine. The friendship may have ended, but the lessons about compassion and forgiveness endure…”the good times.” This is a benefit of Stoic thinking. It has helped me get past a sense of bitterness.
Even in loss, Stoicism asks us to practice gratitude, not for the hurt, but for the good that once existed. That has become my way of remembering Jeff: not as someone who rejected me, but as someone who taught me how to stay kind when kindness feels one-sided.
The Steady Friend
My closest friend today is Jeff E. We’ve been friends for over twenty years, though neither of us remembers exactly how we met, probably at a club in Tampa. We’ve shared weekly lunches for years, maintaining the kind of routine that builds trust through repetition rather than drama.
Jeff knows me as few people do. He listens when I need to talk, but he also calls me out when I drift into self-justification. The philosopher Hierocles described friendship as an ever-expanding circle of concern. We begin with ourselves, then our families, and eventually humanity. Jeff reminds me that growth begins in those small circles.
I think of him whenever I read Marcus Aurelius: “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” A good friend doesn’t just nod along. He quietly helps you practice that line every day.
Research supports what the Stoics intuited two thousand years ago. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed participants for over eight decades, found that “close relationships, more than money or fame, keep people happy throughout their lives.” Good relationships protect health and delay decline. They turn philosophy into physiology.
Jeff’s friendship has been exactly that: grounding, demanding, sustaining. It’s easy to romanticize friendship, but the Stoics saw it as work. It is the slow, steady shaping of two people trying to live well.
Mentors and the Moral Imagination
Just as friends sharpen us, mentors widen our vision. I’ve known numerous people from many walks of life who I’ve tried to learn from and emulate. One important mentor was Dr. Earle Rabb, my pastor when I began attending Palma Ceia United Methodist Church after moving to Tampa. He was soft-spoken but fearless, a steady advocate for inclusion long before the church at large was ready for that conversation.
Dr. Rabb’s life modeled the Stoic fusion of belief and action. Marcus Aurelius praised his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, for being “ready to listen to anyone who could contribute to the common good.” That was Dr. Rabb. He didn’t lecture. He asked questions that opened space for conscience. Even in retirement, he and his wife founded a ministry for the homeless in Western North Carolina and built a shelter through quiet persistence.
I wonder how the Stoics would have described mentorship like his. Seneca’s letters to Lucilius come close. Seneca writes not as an authority but as a fellow traveler: “I am not a wise man, nor shall I ever be. I am content if every day I reduce the number of my faults.” That humility is what makes mentorship sacred. It’s not power, but example.
Dr. Rabb showed me that justice and gentleness can coexist, that moral courage often looks like listening more than speaking. In that way, he stands in the same tradition as the ancient mentors who shaped Marcus, Epictetus, and Musonius Rufus.
The Lineage of Learning
Stoicism itself is a tradition of mentorship. Zeno learned from Crates, Cleanthes from Zeno, and Chrysippus from Cleanthes. Later, Musonius Rufus taught Epictetus, who inspired Marcus Aurelius. The thread of learning was never broken. Each generation shaped the next not through lectures, but through the daily practice of example.
When I first began reading Stoicism seriously, I noticed how personal it is. Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius are intimate, full of affection and confession. “I speak to you as to myself,” he wrote. The exchange between teacher and student was mutual refinement, not authority.
That lineage still matters. Whether in classrooms, churches, or quiet conversations over coffee, wisdom moves through human connection. It’s passed along, not proclaimed. When I think of my mentors and friends, I see that chain extending through time. It’s people helping one another become more honest, more courageous, more kind. It challenges me to like these teachers. I wrote in an essay on the Stoic Practice of Role Models, “Choose your role models with care, and live in a way that inspires others to choose you.” The same applies to both friendship and mentorship.
The Modern Relevance of Stoic Friendship
The Stoics warned against isolating ourselves in the name of independence. Marcus wrote, “What brings no benefit to the hive brings none to the bee.” We live in a culture that prizes autonomy. Yet, study after study confirms that community is the foundation of mental and physical health.
Psychologists at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford have all found that people with at least one close friend or mentor are significantly more resilient to stress and depression. It turns out the Stoics were early behavioral scientists. Friendship literally regulates emotion. It restores perspective when our internal reasoning falters.
I’ve seen that in my own life. When I lose balance, friends have pulled me back toward reason: sometimes with laughter, sometimes with truth I didn’t want to hear. When my mother died, it was a friend in my hometown who sat with me in silence. No philosophy could have said more.
One of the very first people I met when I started a completely new and strange part of my life in Greensboro was Glenda. She worked at the funeral home, where I was just starting, fresh out of college and mortuary school. We immediately became close. She was an ally of the LGBTQ community, and it was at a party at her condo I met the person that lead me out, but Glenda was always right there, cheering me on and consoling me when things didn’t work out. We remained close friends even after I moved away until her death a couple of years ago.
True friends are not escape hatches from life’s hardships. They are companions through them. And good mentors remind us that wisdom is not the absence of pain, but the right use of it.
Practicing Friendship and Mentorship Today
The Stoics treated friendship as a craft. Like music or medicine, it requires study and repetition. Here are ways to practice it.
Be intentional. I make time for friends. I call, write, and show up even when schedules make it inconvenient. Marcus reminded himself that “you exist to work with others.” Connection takes effort. Like most, I’m not perfect at this. I’ve unintentionally let friendships languish, and the distance of time and place comes between us. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve worked harder to reconnect and better maintain those important relationships.
Seek honesty. A true friend can say, “You were wrong today,” and still sit beside you tomorrow. The Stoics valued such candor. Epictetus said, “If you wish to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” My friend Jeff has seen plenty of those times with me. The friend who loves you enough to risk offense is a treasure.
Be a mentor. Mentorship isn’t hierarchy. It’s an example. Whether through teaching, volunteering, or just steady kindness, we all have something to pass along. Dr. Rabb’s way of mentoring with firm conviction and a gentle tone is one I try to carry forward.
Reflect together. Seneca advised nightly self-examination. I’ve found that reflection deepens when shared. Ask a friend, “What did we each do well this week? What could we do better?” It turns accountability into companionship. When there’s no friend around, my AI journaling assistant is surprisingly good at calling me to account.
These aren’t rules, just reminders. Friendship and mentorship are not philosophies we think about. They are philosophies we live out.
Friendship in the Later Seasons of Life
Lately, I’ve been thinking more about friends, the ones still here and the ones who aren’t. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s perspective. I’m more aware now that time is a finite resource and that friendship, like health, cannot be taken for granted.
The Stoics would call this awareness memento mori: the remembrance of mortality. It isn’t morbid; it’s clarifying. It urges us to cherish what is still before us. Seneca wrote, “While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
I find myself reaching out more, sending messages or notes for no reason other than gratitude. I can’t replace the friends I’ve lost, but I can honor them by being a better friend to those still in my life.
There’s a quiet joy in that. When I sit across from Jeff at our lunch, or when I reread one of Rick’s old blog drafts, I feel what the Stoics meant by friendship as virtue. It’s two souls, separate yet aligned, shaping each other toward wisdom.
If Stoicism teaches anything, it is that a good life is not measured in solitude but in the company we keep and the care we give. The friendships we nurture and the mentors we emulate are not side notes to philosophy. They are its living proof.
Author’s Note
This essay is part of my Stoic Practices series exploring how ancient philosophy lives in the modern world. Each piece draws from personal experience and classical teaching to trace the art of living with wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.
