February 12, 2026
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Stoicism

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Stoic Practices: Morning Reflection

B. John 391 Views 0 Comments , , , , , ,
This entry is part 9 of 18 in the series Stoicism Practices
This entry is part 42 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

The mornings came first as exercise. Two years ago, I started walking for my health, beginning with just a few blocks at a time. I carried extra weight then, 187 pounds of it, to be exact. The plan was simple: move more, eat better, and feel less tired. What I didn’t expect was that those early walks would become something much deeper. They began with music, everything from Sousa marches to soft piano covers. Later, I switched to audiobooks to make the walks more productive. But as my life began to shift in other ways, I started walking in silence. In that quiet, something changed. My thoughts began to stretch out and organize themselves.

It became a kind of morning meditation. And like most good accidents, it only later revealed its purpose. I realized that what I was doing was practicing a Stoic exercise—the morning reflection. The Stoics began each day by preparing the mind for the world ahead, anticipating difficulties, and setting a moral compass. Two thousand years later, science affirms what they knew: that a few deliberate minutes at dawn can redirect an entire day.

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Attention
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Attention to the Present Moment

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This entry is part 41 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

Attention does not have to be grand or mystical. It can be a high-school band, thirty students and a tuba, finding themselves perfectly in tune for a few minutes. It can be a quiet morning at The Portico, folding a tablet closed to listen to a man just released from prison. The Stoics called this prosoche—the discipline of attention—and believed it was the core of a good life. When we show up fully in the small moments, we discover what Marcus Aurelius meant when he said the present is the only thing that truly belongs to us.

Modern life makes this harder. Our phones, notifications, and meetings tempt us to drift through our days in fragments. Yet each act of genuine presence pushes back against that fragmentation. In a distracted world, paying attention is an act of resistance and of love. It is how we reclaim the texture of our days and rediscover the quiet pulse of a life well lived.

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Living the Last Best Moment

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This entry is part 38 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

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: Role Models

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This entry is part 10 of 18 in the series Stoicism Practices
This entry is part 40 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

The Stoics believed that we learn virtue through example. Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself as if he were a friend, modeling how to live by holding himself accountable to an imagined mentor. Seneca pointed to Cato as a guide. Epictetus told his students to picture a sage. This practice of role models is simple but powerful: we ask, “What would this person do?” and in answering, we shape our own choices.

For me, role models have been both personal and public. My mother, a nurse for thirty-six years in our local schools, cared for generations of children and called them “my kids.” She held our family together after Dad’s untimely death and lived a life of quiet service that rippled through our community. My band director, Donald Deal, taught discipline and teamwork that lasted far beyond the music hall. Rev. Dr. R. Earle Rabb showed courage in welcoming all God’s children into his church. And figures like John Lewis, Harvey Milk, and Mahatma Gandhi remind me that justice, hope, and service are lived realities, not abstractions. To practice role models is to remember that we are guided by others—and that we, too, may be the model someone else is following.

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Stoic Practices: Journaling

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This entry is part 11 of 18 in the series Stoicism Practices
This entry is part 37 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

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

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This entry is part 33 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism
This entry is part 12 of 18 in the series Stoicism Practices

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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Sympatheia — The Web of Our Shared Humanity

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This entry is part 13 of 18 in the series Stoicism Practices
This entry is part 32 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

There are moments when the illusion of standing alone falls away. Sitting at my mother’s bedside, I watched nurses adjust her blanket, a caregiver whisper encouragement, and my sister lean in to hold her hand. In that small room I saw a truth that philosophy and faith have long tried to teach. Our lives are braided together. The Stoics had a name for this: sympatheia, the recognition that we are bound together in a single web.

Marcus Aurelius urged himself to “meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe.” To him, nothing existed by itself. A hand could not live apart from the body, nor could a person live apart from others. Epictetus called it being a “citizen of the universe.” To forget this bond was to forget who we are.

In our own time, Pope Leo XIV put it this way: “The earth will rest, justice will prevail, the poor will rejoice, and peace will return, once we no longer act as predators but as pilgrims. No longer each of us for ourselves but walking alongside one another.” The Pope’s words echo the Stoics, calling us to remember that the fate of one is tied to the fate of all.

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The View from Above

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This entry is part 14 of 18 in the series Stoicism Practices
This entry is part 31 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

I walked the hospital garden and followed the path of grace. At the end a bronze plaque carried lines from Psalms nine and ten. Refuge for the oppressed. God hears the afflicted. The metal was warm under my hand. Nothing was fixed. Yet something in me settled enough to breathe.

The Stoics call it the View from Above. Rise in your mind. See the room, the floor, the building, the town, the small blue world. The pain stays real, but it finds its size. From there the next right act appears. Ask a clear question. Hold a hand. Eat. Pray. Sleep if you can. The practice pairs with the dichotomy of control and with evening reflection. It opens the frame, then helps you learn from the day.

Tomorrow I head to Boone while my sister and a caregiver sit with Mom. Those mountains have taught me to climb, look, and return. The Wesleyan way names that rhythm as grace. Action without contemplation is unrooted. Contemplation without action is inconsequential. In a brittle season for our republic, this practice steadies my voice and keeps my heart useful.

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The Stoic Practice of Patience

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This entry is part 30 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism
This entry is part 15 of 18 in the series Stoicism Practices

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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Am I A Stoic? AI Says…meh

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This entry is part 29 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

I get some “Prompt-A-Day” emails. One asked for a 10-question Enneagram quiz. I’m fascinated by these personality tests, though I dislike taking them. This time, instead of answering it myself, I fed the prompt into Claude, an AI system, and answered the quiz it created. What followed was more interesting than I expected.

The analysis suggested I’m an Enneagram Type 7, “The Enthusiast.” Energetic, future-focused, quick to act, and sometimes scattered under stress. It also noted I may lean on a Type 6 wing, which adds loyalty and a concern about what others think. Claude then connected this to Stoicism and told me I had some Stoic tendencies—but also some traits that make the Stoic life harder.
That led to a deeper exchange about the practices I’ve been turning to during hard times. When asked which practice mattered most, I answered quickly: memento mori. For me, remembering death isn’t just philosophy. I grew up in the funeral industry, worked in it during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and cared for friends in their final days. Those experiences taught me more about life than death—and made Stoic practice feel like coming home.

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Expecting Trouble-Premeditatio Malorum

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This entry is part 27 of 58 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

Trouble will come. That is not a threat. It is the world as it is. Premeditatio malorum is simple training for a steady heart. Picture what could go wrong. Picture your first response. Keep it short. Keep it concrete. You cannot script life. You can be ready to meet it. Then even hard days make room for small good things. A call from a friend. Light on the trees at dusk. Thanks for what remains.

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