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Apatheia: The Strength of a Steady Mind

March 6, 2026March 6, 2026 B. John 151 Views 0 Comments Emotional Resilience, Mental Clarity, Inner Stability, Stoic Practice, Stoicism, Epictetus, Seneca, Stoic philosophy, Apatheia

The Stoics used the word apatheia to describe a state of emotional balance. While to modern readers it may sound like apathy or indifference, this is a common misconception. Apatheia is not the absence of emotion; rather, it is freedom from destructive emotions that can overwhelm judgment and cloud perception. The key distinction is that apatheia promotes a healthy relationship with emotions, not their elimination.

Epictetus famously taught that people are not disturbed by events themselves, but by the views they take of those events. A delayed response, a harsh comment, or an unexpected setback becomes emotionally painful only after the mind interprets it as something threatening or catastrophic. In that moment, the reaction begins.

The Stoics believed that learning to question those first interpretations is one of the most powerful disciplines a person can develop. When the mind becomes steadier, the emotional storms that once dominated our lives begin to lose their power.

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When Justice Outruns Wisdom

February 27, 2026 B. John 166 Views 0 Comments Civic Leadership, Institutional Integrity, Donald Trump, Moral Discipline, Stoicism, Epictetus, justice, Leadership, Seneca, wisdom

“I told her I was ready to give up. I wasn’t. I was frustrated.”

What began as a communication bottleneck in a church office became a lesson in leadership. When drafts moved without review and a public link went live incorrectly, urgency surged. The concern was legitimate. The tone was not. Justice rose quickly. Wisdom lagged behind. Where has urgency outrun wisdom in your week?

In this new essay, I contemplate what the Stoics understood about anger, discipline, and leadership—and why the same dynamic I saw in myself is evident at the highest levels of national leadership. Anger is a signal. It is not a strategy. Wisdom must organize justice, or institutions begin to fray.

Read: When Justice Outruns Wisdom.

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Stoic Practice: Rehearsing Death and Accepting Fate

November 14, 2025 B. John 491 Views 6 Comments Acceptance, Seneca, personal growth, mortality, grief, Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius

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: Voluntary Discomfort

October 28, 2025November 30, 2025 B. John 409 Views 0 Comments Musonius Rufus, Oliver Burkeman, discipline, hormetic stress, Stoicism, Andrew Huberman, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Resilience, Seneca, voluntary discomfort

When I first began walking, one mile was a struggle. Every step was an argument between my will and my comfort. Over time, those miles became my teacher. What the Stoics called voluntary discomfort is not self-denial but a rehearsal for life’s inevitable hardships. When we choose minor difficulties—a plain meal, a long walk, a day without convenience—we remind ourselves that peace does not depend on comfort. Each act of endurance builds calm, gratitude, and freedom.

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Stoic Practices: Friendship and Mentorship

October 27, 2025November 30, 2025 B. John 470 Views 0 Comments Stoicism, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Friendship, Seneca, virtue, mentorship, relationships, philosophy of life, Gratitude

Some people quietly shape the way we see the world. Some do it by teaching. Others, simply by being there year after year, when life tests our convictions. The Stoics believed that friendship was a form of moral training and that mentorship was the art of walking beside someone as they learn to live well.

In this essay, I reflect on five people who changed the course of my life. They were friends and mentors whose presence became a daily lesson in philosophy. Their stories align with the wisdom of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, as well as with the insights of modern science, proving what the ancients already knew: that deep connection is essential to a good life.

The Stoics called these relationships “friends of virtue.” Today, we call them the people who help us become who we’re meant to be.

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Stoic Practices: Contemplation of Nature

October 15, 2025November 30, 2025 B. John 282 Views 0 Comments Tampa Bay, environmental ethics, balance, humility, Climate Change, Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, hurricane, Seneca, contemplation of nature

Stoicism teaches that nature is both teacher and law. In a time of rising seas and stronger storms, the lesson feels urgent: to live according to nature now means to remember that we are not outside it.

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Rehearsing Virtue in Small Daily Acts

October 13, 2025November 30, 2025 B. John 476 Views 0 Comments Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Massimo Pigliucci, Tampa, virtue, compassion, daily practice, empathy, The Portico, Stoicism

At The Portico café in downtown Tampa, I paused my work to sit with a man who had just been released from prison. He was unsure what to do next. I offered coffee, listened, and waited until the manager returned to connect him with help. It wasn’t a big deal, but later, I realized how much peace there can be in simply giving someone attention for a few minutes.

In the past, I invited my widowed neighbor to join my husband and me for our usual Taco Tuesday after she told me her daughter had been declared cancer-free. She later said how much the evening meant to her. Those simple moments, one with a stranger, one with a friend, reminded me that compassion is a practice. The Stoics taught that virtue is built not in theory but in repetition, through the small choices that make us steady and kind.

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Living the Last Best Moment

September 30, 2025December 13, 2025 B. John 404 Views 0 Comments Joan Didion, Charles Taylor, attention, Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, present moment, Thich Nhat Hanh

Greta Gerwig once said, “You don’t know when the last time of something happening is. You don’t know what the last great day you’ll spend with your best friend is. You’ll just know when you’ve never had that day again.” That line has echoed in me ever since I first heard it. It captures both the sweetness and fragility of the present moment.
The Stoics knew this well. Marcus Aurelius warned against drifting into tomorrow, reminding himself that life is lived only in the day at hand. Seneca told us that we waste time as if it were endless. For them, attention to the present was not a poetic thought. It was survival. It was also the way to live a life worth remembering.
I think of an afternoon long ago with my friend Jim, shooting pool at his parents’ house. Or a fall day on a golf course with my friend Mike, pausing to look over Moss Lake together. Neither seemed extraordinary at the time. Yet they have stayed with me as “last great days.” The lesson is clear: if I want to live fully, I must live here, in this moment, as if it could be the last best one.

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Stoic Practices: Journaling

September 25, 2025November 30, 2025 B. John 689 Views 0 Comments Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Journaling, daily reflection, Anne Frank, self-examination, Stoicism, Epictetus

Journaling has been with me, on and off, for nearly forty-five years. On some days, the entries were little more than chores and frustrations. On other days, they carried the weight of loss, joy, or change. Whatever the tone, the act itself has always mattered. To pause, to write, to take stock is how I come to see myself more clearly. Marcus Aurelius did the same. His Meditations were not written for us, but for himself. They were reminders, small reckonings. Nearly two thousand years later, they are still read because the practice of setting words against the day is timeless.
In our age, the tools are different. My notebooks have become apps, and now even conversations with ChatGPT. Yet the heart of it is unchanged. To journal is to notice: gratitude, struggle, hope. To admit when I’ve fallen short. To celebrate when I’ve grown. Others across history, such as Augustine, Montaigne, Thoreau, Anne Frank, and Virginia Woolf, all wrote for themselves first, and their private pages later guided generations. We may never write for the world, but the habit still shapes us. Journaling is not about being profound. It is about being honest. And honesty, practiced day by day, is the soil of wisdom.

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Apatheia in Practice

September 7, 2025November 30, 2025 B. John 2163 Views 0 Comments James Baldwin, Stoicism, Pierre Hadot, grief, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Resilience, Seneca, Apatheia, William James, Viktor Frankl, Iris Murdoch

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.

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The Stoic Practice of Patience

August 25, 2025November 30, 2025 B. John 2193 Views 0 Comments virtues, Courage, endurance, Time, waiting, Stoicism, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, patience

Hospitals are made of waiting. Waiting for a doctor to make rounds, for a test result to come back, for a mother’s breathing to even out after a restless night. The hours stretch and bend in odd ways. Days lose their shape, and with them the sense of routine that usually steadies a life. In these places, impatience often comes first. It’s that urge to will things forward, to force clarity, to find answers that simply will not arrive on command.
The Stoics did not count patience among their four cardinal virtues. Yet it lies within them all. Patience is the courage that endures hardship without losing hope. It is temperance that reins in anger. It is justice that waits to judge. And it is wisdom that discerns what cannot be rushed. To practice patience is to practice all the virtues at once.. Not passively, but as an active strength in the refusal to be ruled by time’s uneven pace.

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