Stoic Practices: Role Models

This entry is part 40 of 45 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations in the second person. He spoke to himself as if he were a friend or a teacher giving advice. This was no accident. The Stoics knew that we learn virtue by example, and sometimes the best way to see ourselves clearly is to imagine how a role model would respond in our place.

Epictetus urged his students to picture a sage when tempted. Seneca held up Cato as an exemplar of integrity. Marcus himself listed those who had shaped him, including his teachers, family, and friends. The practice of role models is simple but profound. We become who we admire, and the lives of others show us how to live our own.

I have been blessed with role models whose examples still shape me.

The first was my mother. She was a nurse her entire career, and for thirty-six years she served as the school system nurse in our hometown. She cared for at least three generations of children, and she always called them “my kids.” Her work was more than a job. She made sure each child had what they needed to succeed in school. For many, she was the difference between slipping through the cracks and finding a foothold.

Her resilience mattered as much as her care. After Dad’s untimely death, she carried herself with dignity and pressed forward, shouldering the responsibilities of a single parent. She raised my youngest sister while working both at the hospital and in the schools. Even as her energy subsided and her age increased, she continued to visit others, deliver Bridges’ barbecue to friends on Sundays, and keep a breakfast group of women together after the group’s namesake had passed. Always thinking of others, always caring.

When her own life drew to a close, a hospice nurse came to care for her. That nurse had once been a second-grader in one of Mom’s six schools, and she remembered her. That small moment showed me the Stoic truth of interconnectedness. What Marcus referred to as our shared citizenship in the world. Our actions ripple farther than we can see. My mother’s ripples spread across decades and generations.

Even in death, her care continues. She helped over 120 people trace their family’s history so that relatives could join the Daughters of the American Revolution. The local DAR chapter also created a scholarship for nursing in her name. Seneca wrote that the wise leave behind “not monuments of stone but examples of conduct.” My mother did exactly that.

A different kind of role model came in the form of my band director, Donald Deal. For six years of junior high and high school, he demanded excellence. Under his leadership, our band achieved superior ratings in grade six concert band competition. But more than the music, he taught discipline, preparation, and teamwork. Those lessons have stayed with me throughout my life.

Years after his retirement, I visited him at his home. He remembered so many of us, asked about our lives, and spoke warmly of the times we shared. Some of us had given him a hard time back then, but it was clear he had loved us all and was proud of the people we had become. His influence extended not only to the scores we played but also to the character he helped shape.

The Stoics insisted that justice is the highest virtue, and role models remind us what it looks like in practice. One such figure for me was Rev. Dr. R. Earle Rabb, a former pastor at Palma Ceia United Methodist. Long before it was common or safe, he welcomed people of color into his congregation. When some resisted, he stood on the church steps to clear the way for them to enter. He embodied the courage of conviction. A man of intellect and deep faith, he showed me what it means to be both a pastor and a prophet, a leader who believed the Gospel was for all God’s children.

In him, I see the same spirit that animated Mahatma Gandhi, who taught the world that nonviolent resistance can be an act of love. Gandhi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Rev. Rabb lived that truth in his ministry. Even in retirement, he worked to establish a homeless shelter in the town where they moved and continues to serve the community there. 

Public figures have also served as role models in my life. John Lewis, who spoke of making “good trouble,” reminds me that courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to act despite it. Lewis faced beatings and imprisonment, yet he never lost sight of the larger vision of justice. Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, declared that “Hope will never be silent.” His voice, raised in defense of LGBTQ people’s dignity, echoes in every fight for equality today.

These figures remind me that role models are not flawless heroes. They are people who choose to live their values, often at great personal cost. They show us that justice, hope, and service are not abstract virtues but lived realities.

And role models are not only those we look up to. They are also what we become for others. That is a humbling thought. In my career, I have had colleagues and younger professionals look to me for guidance. At times, I may have been the steady voice in a difficult project or the one who showed how to handle setbacks with persistence. At my church, I have helped lead programs that encouraged our community to confront injustice with honesty and hope. Without intending it, I became someone others watched. So remember, someone is always watching, not to judge, but to learn how to live. Give them something worth learning.

Marcus Aurelius never expected his private notes to survive. Yet his Meditations became a role model for generations. Our lives may not be inscribed on parchment, but they are read in the hearts of those around us. Children, friends, coworkers, even strangers. We all live in the sight of others.

The Stoic practice of role models serves as both an anchor and a mirror. We anchor ourselves by asking, “What would my mother do here? How would John Lewis respond?” We hold a mirror to ourselves by remembering that someone may be asking the same about us. The chain of virtue runs both ways. We draw strength from those who came before us, and in turn, we pass it on.

Seneca once wrote, “Choose someone whose life, conversation, and expressive face reflect the kind of person you wish to be. Always have that person in your mind.” For me, that person may be my mother bringing food to a neighbor, or Donald Deal glaring at his former students, or Rev. Rabb clearing a church doorway, or Lewis marching on a bridge. These images guide me more than abstract rules ever could.

Stoicism asks us not to stand alone but to stand in the company of the virtuous. To live as if watched by those we admire. To remember that we too are part of that great company, and that our lives, however ordinary, may one day be someone else’s model for how to live.