Deep Something

Friendship and Impermanence

September 11, 2025September 12, 2025 B. John 1834 Views 0 Comments Friendship, Memory, Gratitude, Loss, Reflection, Pierre Hadot, Impermanence

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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Apatheia in Practice

September 7, 2025September 7, 2025 B. John 1987 Views 0 Comments Marcus Aurelius, Resilience, Seneca, Apatheia, William James, Viktor Frankl, Iris Murdoch, James Baldwin, Stoicism, Pierre Hadot, grief, Epictetus

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.