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Stoic Practice: Rehearsing Death and Accepting Fate

November 14, 2025 B. John 166 Views 3 Comments Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, Acceptance, Seneca, personal growth, mortality, grief

This entry is part 50 of 50 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Stoicism Practices

I grew up with death in the next room. My father managed a funeral home, and for a time our family lived in a small apartment above it. Most kids grew up with kitchen noise and television. I grew up with the quiet hum of grief drifting through the walls. I did not think much about it at the time, but it shaped how I see life. It also shaped how I understand endings. Later, I buried friends during the AIDS crisis. I cared for one of them in my home until he died. Those years taught me that death does not wait for a convenient moment. It just arrives.

The Stoics understood this impulse to drift into denial. They practiced rehearsing death so they could return to what mattered. The practice does not pull you toward fear. It pulls you toward clarity. In my own life, the deaths of family and friends have reminded me of this same truth. We do not control the length of our days. We control how we use the ones we have. If you want to read more about how the practice shaped my own path through grief, transition, and aging, you can find the full essay here.

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Stoic Practices: Negative Visualization

November 4, 2025November 4, 2025 B. John 222 Views 0 Comments Resilience, Premeditatio Malorum, grief, mindfulness, negative visualization, Preparation, Gratitude

This entry is part 48 of 50 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Stoicism Practices

What if imagining loss could make life feel fuller, not darker? The Stoics called it premeditatio malorum—the quiet practice of picturing what could go wrong, not to suffer in advance, but to steady the heart for when it does.

In this new essay, I write about sitting beside my mother near the end of her life, and later facing my own health scare. Both moments taught me that rehearsing misfortune isn’t about fear. It’s about gratitude. The kind that comes from realizing how much you already have.

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Grief in Pieces

September 16, 2025September 17, 2025 B. John 1466 Views 0 Comments death, Memento Mori, grief, Memory

This entry is part 35 of 50 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

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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Apatheia in Practice

September 7, 2025September 7, 2025 B. John 2050 Views 0 Comments Marcus Aurelius, Resilience, Seneca, Apatheia, William James, Viktor Frankl, Iris Murdoch, James Baldwin, Stoicism, Pierre Hadot, grief, Epictetus

This entry is part 33 of 50 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

This essay is not only about ideas. It comes from my own season of upheaval. I was laid off in June. My husband has just been laid off from his job. I’ve been away from home for three weeks, staying in my mother’s house while she was in and out of the hospital. This past Wednesday, she died. I was holding her hand as she took her last breaths. In the middle of all this, my study of Stoicism has helped me keep some balance. Not by taking away grief, but by helping me live through it without being consumed.

Apatheia means freedom from being ruled by unruly passion. It does not mean coldness. It does not mean apathy. The Stoics were clear about this. Seneca wrote that “anger is a short madness.” Epictetus warned his students not to confuse love with clinging. Marcus wrote, “Take away the thought I have been harmed, and the harm is taken away.” Apatheia does not erase feeling, but steadies it. It gives room for grief, anger, and fear without letting them take over.