One fine fall day I was strolling down our road in the hills near our farm, returning home from a long walk. It was a beautiful day and the gentle pace in nature was helping me get over a pain flare. A car approached me from the opposite direction, and came to a stop. “There’s a bear down there, but don’t worry, it’s only a cub,” the driver said. I thanked him and walked on, being sure to make noise as I went, so as not to startle the young bear with my looming presence.

A couple hundred yards down the road, I heard rustling in the forest on my right and I suddenly realized with great clarity that I didn’t want to encounter a bear of any age or size. Just as I was having my epiphany, the cub emerged from the trees about 20 feet away. He looked plenty big enough to me--not full grown, but more of a yearling than a cute little Teddy cub. Roughly a young Danny DeVito sized bear.

I had studied up on what to do, as I’d always known there was a chance that I might encounter one up close. I made myself “big” by raising my arms over my head. I didn’t look the cub in the eyes. I spoke in a calm and even tone. I don’t remember what exactly I said but it must have greatly angered him, because he let out a bowel-evacuatingly scary growl and charged me. He didn’t bite or claw me, but he did ram me with his shoulder as he went by, before turning and running back into the woods.

The blow caused me to stagger back a few steps, and I was lucky to stay on my feet, as I’m not very steady to begin with. I didn’t know what to do. At this point I heard a crashing noise in the forest to my left, and I recalled that a bear cub is never far from its mother. I was now in the proverbial worst place in the woods—between a mother bear and her cub.

I couldn’t see the mama yet, but I knew enough not to turn and leg it, because the bears could move faster than me, and there was no elderly person or small child nearby for me to outrun. I moved away slowly, still babbling nonsense in what I hoped was a calm tone. I took careful steps backward, praying that I wouldn’t trip and fall.

The mama bear came charging out of the forest and ran across the road and into the woods where the cub had gone. I paused for a bit, wondering if it was safe to reverse course and head home. The mama bear had other ideas. She came back out of the woods and began patrolling back and forth, blocking my way. She was big, maybe 200 pounds.

I tried to call for help, but I had no cell service. I had no choice but to pace and wait for rescue. I have no sense of smell, but I knew that when the small bear charged me, he left his scent on my clothing. I knew the mama could smell it too, and identify me as the bipedal bear-botherer.

Before very long I heard a car approaching and when it came around the bend I waved it down. The driver came to a stop in the middle of the road and opened the passenger window a couple inches. “There’s a bear down there, her cub charged at me, can you give me a ride?” I blurted. And the woman said, “I don’t know you.” It was just my luck that at this moment the mama bear had retreated into the woods.

I pleaded with the woman that this was a matter of safety. I was nearly in tears. “I live at the farm right down the road!” “Well, I’ll drive along next to you while you walk.” This would have left me just as exposed to the vigilant mama bear. I’m a middle-aged broad with the muscle tone of a raw clam and I don’t think my appearance is intimidating, especially in yoga pants and ballet slippers.

I couldn’t force my way into her car. I told her, “Okay, go, I will find somebody who will help me.” I was weak in the knees, tears welling in my eyes, trembling with a confluence of emotions. I was angry and disappointed that she wouldn’t help a fellow human. I wasn’t asking for a kidney, I was asking to sit in the trunk of her car to get safely home. My house was in the direction she was going anyway! As this Bad Samaritan drove away, I reflected that if I did get mauled, at least she’d feel extremely guilty when she read my obituary.

For 20 nerve-racking minutes I watched the mama bear walking her beat, perhaps thinking of recipes. Finally another car came along and this time the driver was willing to give me a lift.

When I got back home and had the ability to sip a mug of tea without shaking, I thought about bravery. I didn’t think I’d been brave in facing down the bear cub and its mamma. I was stuck in the situation; I had no choice but to do my best. The woman who refused to let me in her car—she was a coward. She had a choice to make and she chose fear.

A great number of our choices are fear-based. There is a lot to fear and it’s easy to fall prey to the emotion. This has been a nerve-jangling century. It began with the 2000 election, followed by haunting horrors of 9/11, the ensuing wars, more terrorism, economic collapse, Ebola, SARS, bird flu, political jackassery, Zika, racial injustice, environmental crisis, COVID-19, and rule by a kakistocracy. We’ve had the pants scared off us on numerous occasions.

You don’t set out to be brave in the face of everything that’s hurled at you. It’s within everyone to be brave. Courage is not absence of fear, it’s acting in the face of fear. Each day brings risks, everything from slipping on a banana peel, to ripping a foghorn fart in a religious service, to getting pancaked by a meteor. You don’t quiver in your room under the covers, though, you get up and go out in the world.

Every day, people walk around out in the open, even though falling blue ice from an airplane toilet could plummet 30,000 feet and turn them into a stinky flattened corpse. We face up to the dangers, and perhaps even laugh at them. As Seneca said, “Sometimes just to live is an act of bravery.”

Since we all have this resource of courage, why don’t we celebrate it? We tend to focus more on our negative thoughts, as if somehow our fears and anxieties are more important than kindness and generosity. Our finer qualities like resilience and bravery, these should be our valued virtues. You can become braver by changing your way of thinking. Honor and nurture your courage. Shift your attention from worry to anticipation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” You have the power to make that assessment.

In order to experience tranquility and calm in the world, we need to have it in our community, our home, and first of all in our minds. In my family, we’ve learned how to stay calm and in control from being on the water.

My husband John rowed in college and raced internationally and continues to row at the Master’s Level. My son, Jack, is a high-level competitive collegiate rower and national champion. He’s won races around the US and the UK. He has hopes of making the 2028 Olympic team. (As for me, I enjoy floating on an inflatable raft in the pool on a sunny day.)

Jack and his teammates are so good because they practice. Two hours a day, six days a week, every week of the year. The season is ten races and they finish each in under six minutes. Hundreds of hours of practice for an hour of competition. He’s now training for the Henley Regatta in England and they’re practicing more intensely than ever. A morning row, then lifting, then another row, and then a 5K run.

Even with all this preparation, there’s a lot that can go wrong in a crew race, technically or physically. The wind, temperature and currents are unpredictable. The cheering of the crowd and the ringing of cowbells is distracting. “Catching a crab,” which means missing a stroke, can not only be painful, but can knock a boat out of the running. If the wind is too strong you can’t hear the coxswain coaching your team down the course. There are unforeseen obstacles: at a recent regatta one boat rammed into a goose. Another was hit by a wave and was swamped. Maybe you just ate a bad clam the night before the race and aren’t feeling tip-top. There’s a lot of literal and figurative turbulence.

This is why Jack and his teammates practice with such intensity and passion. When you’ve done it all before, reacting to anything unexpected will be second nature. As they train their bodies, they train their minds to stay calm.

Just as crew practice happens in a lower-key atmosphere than race day, I believe we should tend to our philosophy in quiet calm moments. That’s the only way you’ll be ready when chaos comes knocking.

Two years ago, Jack was set to race at Henley for the first time. His team was supposed to fly to London from New York. The flight was canceled, and they slept overnight on the floor in JFK airport. Finally they got on a flight for Manchester and then raced for a train to Henley. They arrived 39 minutes before their first race started, without any of their luggage. They rowed in the airplane clothes they had been wearing for three days–and won that qualifying heat. Jack and his teammates, now in their usual uniforms, went on to win the Reading Regatta and set a course record. They did not allow this turbulent and chaotic trip to derail them.

Rowing is a Stoic sport. Stoicism emphasizes self control and mastery of emotions. Rowing demands rigorous training, mastery of technique and the mental vigor to pursue excellence.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that “The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” In Stoic wisdom, the dichotomy of control states that we can’t control what happens, we can only control how we respond. In rowing, what is in your control is your effort and training, your strength with each stroke and staying in rhythm with your boatmates. What is out of your control is the wind, the temperature, the currents in the river. You can’t control the competition, the traffic on the river, the noise from the spectators, or the wildlife that lives near the water. A calm mind gives the rower strength.

The boats are designed for speed and are easy to tip over. Disruption and panic can flip the boat. Rowers must learn to stay calm when things get tough. I think that practice is a form of premeditatio malorum, honing them on not just how to do the right things in an intense competition, but how to succeed when everything seems to be going wrong. As for me, cheering on the banks and banging on my cowbell, I know what could go wrong during a race, but I am tranquil because I know Jack has prepared.

Who can you offer forgiveness to?

What are you paying attention to today?

He is a member of the faculty at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He produces philosophy videos in his main YouTube channel (over 3,500 so far), is a member of the Modern Stoicism steering committee, and was editor of Stoicism Today from 2016-2023.

Greg and his wife Andi live in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1. As a philosophy professor, what’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned from your students?

I’ve been teaching philosophy, as well as a variety of other subjects (religious studies, literature, writing), now for 27 years, so not only can I say that I’ve had a vast number of interactions with students, but I also have to admit that I’ve likely forgotten a far greater number of those than the ones I remember. And since there have been countless surprises over the years, there’s a strong possibility that the most surprising ones number among those I’ve forgotten! Rather than focusing on one particular interaction that was surprising, I think I’ll say something about a broader dynamic that it took me a while to wrap my head around. I’ll call it a “virtuous cycle” in education, both in the classroom and online.

Most of my academic teaching has been in what we call “service classes.” These are the sort of “core” or “general education” courses that students are required to take, which only very occasionally satisfy any requirement for their major. It’s rare for me to have any philosophy majors in those classes. Think Intro to Philosophy, Critical Thinking, general Ethics, or Logic courses, as well as various applied or professional ethics courses like Medical Ethics or Business Ethics. You’ve generally got a mix of students from different backgrounds, with varied levels of interest and diligence, majoring in most of the fields the institution offers. For many of them, it is their very first and perhaps only philosophy course they will take. Most have no idea what “philosophy” might mean. Some are anxious, imagining it is going to be very difficult and abstract, worried about whether they’re up for it. Many of them would rather not be devoting that time to a subject and to topics they don’t see any payoff for in their life or studies.

I basically stumbled into a productive approach (I won’t say the only possible right approach) to those students early on in my teaching career. It accomplishes a number of different things that we want to occur in college or university education. I don’t water down the curriculum as some instructors are tempted to do, thinking they’ll more easily reach the students “where they’re at” by selecting much easier texts. I have my students read selections, sometimes entire works, by classic and contemporary thinkers. I also stress to those students that every single one of them, whether they feel themselves up to studying the real deal philosophical works, is indeed capable of reading and understanding them, provided they get some needed support. And that support is what they get in my classes, both through the many resources I’ve developed for them (lesson pages, handouts, videos, just to name a few), and focused class sessions where we work through the texts and apply the concepts to many examples taken from their day-to-day lives or their majors.

It’s not 100% guaranteed (what is?) to work with every class of students, but generally what happens is the development of a virtuous circle. I hold the students to high expectations, but I tell them I have confidence they can meet them with support, and I provide them that support. That not only eases a lot of anxiety and removes some of their reticence to contribute in class. More positively it gives at least some of them a sense that we’re engaged in something important for them, that they’re getting an opportunity to study something worthwhile, and that they’ve got an experienced leader who cares about not just the material but them as persons, their ideas and experiences, their development, and their later careers. And that in turn tends to make them more willing to work, not to be merely passive consumers in the class, to make an effort to contribute on their ends. That generates classes that are typically enjoyable and engaging for at least most of us on any given day. And over the course of the semester, the cycle repeats, which tends to help the matters we studied stick in their heads better after our course time together is finished.

Now, why is that a surprise? Really for two main reasons. First, as I wrote earlier, I just sort of wound up doing things that way, and it paid off well for me and the thousands of students enrolled in my courses over the years. Second, I’ve noticed that that sort of approach, and that kind of virtuous circle, is unfortunately not all that common in higher education. I’ve had many philosophy colleagues over the years who really dislike and disvalue teaching those service classes, framing them as essentially wasting their time slumming with people who will never really care about philosophy, just to earn a paycheck. I’ve talked with many people who took an Intro to Philosophy or Ethics class, and said that for one reason or another it was not a good experience, and when we’ve discussed it further, at least a significant responsibility for that clearly fell on the instructor’s shoulders. So it’s a surprise to me that people who claim to care about their field, its grand ideas, great writers and texts, wouldn’t want to foster an interest in it and appreciation for it with as many students as possible.

2. You’ve written about your recent accident and the aftermath. Is Stoicism helping with your recovery? Do you use a crutch like Epictetus, or a cane?

I’m still four months later using a cane, but only when I have to walk some distance, and mainly because my medical staff haven’t entirely cleared me to leave it behind. I’m hoping to put it away in storage before too long. Just so people know what we’re referring to, I had a rather freak accident, fell just right on a hardwood floor and shattered what they call the “head and neck” of my right femur. So I had to have an emergency hip replacement, which due to the trauma and other circumstances is a bit unlike, a bit more intense than, the usual hip replacement surgery people might have in mind. There was a good bit of healing, adjustment, and physical therapy required afterwards.

I suppose that Stoicism has helped with my recovery, though not in any sort of direct way. I’m not knocking anyone for whom this helps, but I don’t usually bring up quotes for myself in particular situations to provide guidance on how to get through them. It’s more like I’ve been rereading and sometimes teaching or referencing Stoic texts and thinkers for so long that after a while I found my attitudes, mindsets, priorities, reactions and what I focus upon wind up changing along lines that are, let’s say, in accordance with Stoicism. When the accident happened, immediately accompanied by a lot of pain and loss of mobility, soon after involving time in the emergency room, being transported and contorted for x-rays, a somewhat bumpy ambulance ride over to the main medical campus, lots of explanations and questions from doctors and nurses, and then the surgery itself and the aftermath, my reactions to everything were surprisingly reasonable.

The pain was the pain, not the worst I’ve ever felt, but pretty intense, but I was able to view it in context of what happens when you’ve got a body, you wind up doing serious damage to it, and pretty significant interventions and alterations are the only prudent remedy. For someone used to walking four to five miles a day, having to laboriously use a walker just to move around a hospital room or later in our small living space could feel demoralizing. That, too, I was able to respond to in a way that kept things in proportion. I was entirely dependent upon the medical staff and my wife in the hospital and then just my wife for about my first week at home, and for someone accustomed to a lot of independence and used to long work weeks, that likely would have been a lot tougher for me years back. But studying and practicing Stoicism for years, again not in any direct manner, prepared me well to deal with the new, non-ideal circumstances well.

3. What drew you to Stoicism?

Originally, it wasn’t so much Stoicism I was drawn to as to two Stoic authors. One of them, Epictetus, I ran across back in college, when we read his Enchiridion as the only Stoic text in an Ancient and Medieval Philosophy class. I also got a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations my first year in college and read through it, though I was mainly interested in him as a military commander. So I didn’t get much out of those first encounters with Stoicism. It was only later on in graduate school and then early on in my teaching career, that I made my way back to Stoicism. In a used book store, I found a copy of Epictetus’ Discourses, and as I was reading around in it I realized that he was discussing a number of matters having to do with choice, habits, motivation, and self-improvement that I had become particularly interested in. So I bought the book and read through it multiple times, just in the English translation back then (though by that point in grad school, I was reading Plato and Aristotle in Greek).

In my last few years in graduate school, I became very interested in what ancient and medieval philosophers could contribute to understanding and managing anger. I had been struggling with my own issues with anger since my childhood, and I’d seen quite a bit of what psychotherapists and psychologists had to say about that, a good bit of which was rather shallow and sometimes even counter-productive. And at the same time, by reading widely in philosophy, I was seeing that philosophers had worked out pretty robust approaches to that emotion, but that most people interested in philosophy weren’t reading the parts of their texts that dealt with and developed their theories and practices. You can well imagine that sooner or later I’d find out that Seneca wrote an entire work On Anger, and I’d read it. In fact, that was the first work of his I engaged with.

When I study a philosophical thinker or school, my general approach is to read around in the available texts, looking not just for some main ideas, but trying to build up in my own mind a picture of the complex interconnections between not just some main ideas but all the stuff we find in those works. Decades back, I coined an off-the-cuff name for that approach, which I call “philosophical detective work”. It’s definitely not a common approach in philosophy, but it can be incredibly rewarding to practice, and for schools like the Stoics, where you have thinkers who are writing in two different languages (Greek and Latin), often saying things that don’t easily map onto each other, it can be a very productive way to study and to present them. That’s the approach I’ve been taking with Stoicism for years.

I’ll give you one example of what I mean. We know that virtue is centrally important for the Stoics, and that, like most of the other ancient schools, they identify four main “cardinal” virtues: prudence (wisdom), justice, temperance, and courage. That’s unfortunately where a lot of would-be Stoics stop in their studies and understanding. As it turns out, each of those four cardinal virtues encompasses a number of “subordinate” virtues as well. So you can’t really know what classic Stoics meant by temperance, for example, if you just gloss it as “self-control” or “moderation”. You have to actually go see what the Stoic texts say about the full range of the subordinate virtues falling under temperance. Now Arius Didymus actually gives us some listings and brief explanations of what the subordinate virtues are, but he’s just one starting point, and unfortunately some people stop there. If you want to reconstruct and thereby really understand the full range of the subordinate virtues, you have to read across pretty much the entire body of Stoic literature as well as literature not by Stoics but about them. And to be honest, you also have to go back to the Greek and Latin, not just relying on translators. Doing precisely that with Stoicism and the virtues is a project I’ve been engaging in now for about five years, offering classes and seminars, producing videos, writing posts, producing resources, and working on two book-length projects on that topic.

To return to the original question, since you might say that I’ve ranged pretty far afield of what drew me to Stoicism, I can say that there’s an answer to what initially got me into Stoicism, and then there’s an answer about what continues to draw me in, differently and more deeply, in the present.

4. You host a heavy metal YouTube show. Can you think of an ancient Stoic who would have been into metal? If so, what would their favorite band be?

Yes, my good friend and colleague, Scott Tarulli, a guitar professor at Berklee School of Music and a great musician in his own right, and I co-host a more or less monthly Classic Metal Class. We started it years back, because in our conversations about much more academic matters, mostly philosophy and rhetoric, he and I were constantly using stuff from heavy metal as examples we’d apply the theories to, and then going off on tangents together about bands, songs, musicians, and the like. So as two metalheads since childhood, we decided to pool our talents and start up that class. Now about ancient Stoics who would have been into heavy metal, that’s a tough one, because I think that temperamentally none of the authors we read (like Seneca or Epictetus) or at least read about (like Zeno or Posidonius) would probably have been into heavy metal. They likely would view it as a bit excessive musically, and perhaps would regard many of the lyrics and themes, let’s just say, unedifying.

So you might well wonder whether there could be some tensions, even contradictions between being a Stoic but also not just being a longtime listener to heavy metal but someone who takes that musical genre seriously enough to devote thought and discussion to it. There’s a very straightforward response I can make, which is that I don’t actually claim to be a Stoic, but rather an eclectic like Cicero, someone who embraces a good bit but not every aspect of Stoicism and integrates it with other robust philosophies as ways of life. But that doesn’t really address the concern about Stoicism and heavy metal perhaps being out of sync for each other. I will say that there are some metal bands, musicians, songs, lyrics, lifestyles, even perhaps certain sub-genres where you’re probably not going to productively bring them together without outright contradictions. The bleakness and nihilistic pronouncements of certain black metal bands, the advocacy of hedonism above all else of others, that’s not going to fit with any genuine Stoicism. Other bands, and Triumph is the first and foremost one that comes to mind, I think are not just compatible with Stoicism but perhaps without meaning to even exemplify it.

5. How can modern Stoics strike a balance between updating the philosophy for our world, while remaining true to the core principles?

I suppose the first thing one would need to do in order to work that out is to find out for oneself what the actual core principles of Stoicism are. One common encounter I have is with people interested in Stoicism, who have studied it a bit, and think that they’ve figured out what Stoicism’s core principles are, but end up being mistaken about them. Sometimes it’s not entirely their fault that they’ve been misinformed. They trusted some popular author who led them astray, who might themselves have views about Stoicism that are at odds with what the actual classic Stoics tell us. There’s a lot of these, so I’ll just give one prime example. Stoicism teaches that “virtue is the only good,” right? Well. . . no. You can find that formulation in a very few places in Stoic texts. Much more often you’ll see “virtue and what participates in virtue is the good”. But you’ll also find a number of general or specific things that are not themselves virtue explicitly called “goods” in Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Arius, and others. So clearly the “Stoic principle” involved is more complicated than the over-simplified version of it.

So let’s say someone has put in the time to attentively study, to learn what the Stoics actually think about matters, including where some Stoics have one view and others a different view. That person has built up for themselves a good grasp of Stoic principles, and now the issue is how to live those out in a contemporary world. In a lot of cases, it seems pretty straightforward, since many features of our current day society and the world more generally haven’t changed radically. We may live longer, and we may not typically have death and dying as present in our era as they did in the ancient Mediterranean world, but we’re all going to die, and everyone we know will either die before us, after us or at the same time. That’s a for-the-present inevitable feature of the human condition that Stoic philosophy can help us understand.

We might still be subject to many illnesses and injuries that plagued people in the past, as well as some new ones as well, but the discipline of medicine has certainly advanced since ancient times. Does that radically alter how we would apply Stoic principles? Not really, though we certainly have to use them within situations that are very different from ancient times. Some matters of the body that perhaps just to be accepted and dealt with as they are now prove amenable to remedy through surgery, medication, diet, exercise, and many other approaches. And yet, the body does remain an external and indifferent from a Stoic perspective, which we ought to use wisely.

There are a vast variety of matters that play significant roles in our late modern lives that the ancient Stoics didn’t have anything to say about. Dating and the wide range of modern romantic relationships, for example, or social media usage and cell phone, or awareness of the impacts we have upon the global environment. These sorts of matters provide us with opportunities for thinking about the implications for Stoic principles we already understand within new situations, bearing on unforeseen issues and challenges.

There are yet other matters where perhaps we ought to prudently leave behind certain ideas classic Stoics were committed to, for instance, the notion of God as logos permeating the entire universe and providentially ordering it. We have to exercise prudence, an orientation to discerning truth. One might find some way to hold onto that in the present, depending on what one chooses to mix Stoicism up with, but another related notion we likely need to abandon as not just factually unlikely but also of no real use to us is the ekpyrosis, that is, the idea that the universe periodically resolves into elements that are consumed by fire, leaving only God behind, and then it starts all over again.

So it really does depend quite a bit on what Stoic “principles” we have in mind and how we think Stoicism ought to apply to our present-day situations, society, and lives.

Don’t be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day’s own trouble is enough.

Matthew 6.34

Do not let the future disturb you, for you will come to it, if necessary, bringing with you the same reason that you now use to deal with the present.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.8

“Jesus & Stoicism” is published March 17, but if you’re interested, please pre-order now—it really helps authors!

Jesus & Stoicism and Bookshop.org

Jesus & Stoicism at Amazon

Now it is almost spring, and the maple trees have been tapped. The black bears woke early this season; they drink straight from the sap buckets, drain them dry, and toss the empties like beer cans at an ursine frat party. Daylight Savings Time is upon us, and the prospect of later sunsets is a reminder to finally take down my beautiful winter candles.

Where does time go?

Between the demands of work, family, friends, managing a chronic illness, writing, speaking gigs, being a patient advocate, and the everyday hustle and bustle of living in the 21st century, the silent and swift flow of time seems to accelerate with every season. I’ve oversubscribed to philosophical newsletters, and the tower of books next to my nightstand is staggeringly tall. Where has all my intentional reading time gone? Tempus fugit.

When I was diagnosed with a chronic, treatable, but incurable degenerative neurological disease, I was told that my life expectancy wasn’t going to match that of my peers. I’ve now outlived my predicted expiration date by a decade and a half. I’m into my extra innings, my bonus round on the house. No one truly knows how many seasons we will see; how many more times will I set the candles on the windowsills? How many more springs will I cheer for my son as he rows on the Thames with his crew team? How many more treatments will keep me going until they lose their power to keep my brain lesion at bay?

Seneca observed in the opening sentence of “On the Shortness of Life” that “the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but we are wasteful of it.” These words reverberated through me like a cherry bomb in a wind chime factory. We are given all the life we need; it is when we race through it, over-scheduling our lives, and scrolling until our thumbs bleed, that our days feel short.

I accept the fact that I have an unknown but finite amount of time and a limited amount of energy. It is up to me to make the most of my days. When anxiety, trivia, and reality TV shows threaten to make my mind full, I become mindful instead. Instead of rushing through things, I slow down. I go deep on one thing instead of scattering my attention across a dozen things.

My mantra when I’m on the verge of getting overwhelmed is “Some things are in our control and others not,” the bracing opening of Epictetus’ Enchiridion. (Another thing I’ve learned from Stoicism is to always start off with a bang. What is it with Stoics and first sentences, anyway?) Not everything is in my power to control, but I can control what I give my time and attention to. It’s easy to fall into the error of thinking control refers only to our ability to take action in the world, or not. But Epictetus is quite clear that what’s in our control is our own mind. Stoic mindfulness is about our ability to control what we pay attention to.

It’s one of the maddening perversities of life that sometimes we barely notice we’re alive and often the only time we do is when we’re close to not being alive. Pay attention. Sharon Lebell’s version of Epictetus, “The Art of Living,” contains the line “You become what you give your attention to.” Give your attention to a philosophical newsletter, or the great novel “Erasure.” Maybe you will simply pay attention to your own thoughts; self -knowledge is the most necessary knowledge of all.

Albert Einstein said there are two ways to live your life, one as if nothing is a miracle, the other as if everything is a miracle. I’m on team everything. I believe that if you are mindful, and pay close attention, you will see miracles.

Acknowledge the small things. My son Jack and I have a ritual where we go out to look at the stars, even if we’re not together, even if we can’t see them due to cloud cover or light pollution in New York City. We know they are there, just like he knows my love for him is there–it’s eternal. If that isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

Brother David Steindl-Rast, the wise Benedictine monk (and co-author of a book with the magnificent modern Stoic Sharon Lebell), said “In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” I’m acquainted with a business titan who’s known as much for his numerous wives and lavish lifestyle as for the blue chip companies he owns. It strikes me that although he’s smart and successful, his primary drive is to accumulate things.

Is he grateful for what he’s amassed? Does it make him happy? I don’t understand this urge, though if you ask my husband he will claim I have an insatiable desire for taxidermy. I’m grateful for my stuffed skunk, which makes me happy when I see it on the mantelpiece.

One lovely summer evening, Kurt Vonnegut and his pal Joseph Heller found themselves at a party thrown by this same business titan, who collected art as well as literary guests. Vonnegut, who was a cheeky wisenheimer, took a poke at Heller: “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?” Heller replied, “I’ve got something he can never have. The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Seneca wrote, “Learn to be content with little, and cry out with courage and with greatness of soul: ‘We have water, we have porridge; let us compete in happiness with Jupiter himself.’” Personally I’m not a fan of porridge, but this and a slice of my favorite Joe’s Pizza are both what the Stoics call “indifferents.” We may prefer one thing to another, but they are not the basis of our happiness.

For Stoics, happiness comes from the practice of our virtues, which leads to “eudaimonia”--flourishing. And this begins in gratitude. Can you be courageous if you fear losing what you have? Can you be moderate if you envy another’s good fortune? Can you be wise if your mental energy is directed towards acquisition? Can you be just if your primary concern is for yourself? In every case, gratitude diverts us from selfishness and directs us to our best selves. Our Stoicism gives us the knowledge that we have enough.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my tummy is rumbling and I’m grateful I can run off to Joe’s for a cheese slice.

My idea of a beach vacation is to sleep late, then cover myself from head to toe in a muumuu and a giant hat, and huddle under an umbrella on the sand with a bag full of books. My husband and his friends, a group of middle-aged athletes from his college crew team, leaped out of bed at 6AM to row in the harbor. Then they raced home to put on their golf shoes and shoot 18 holes. After eating a quick lunch they played tennis, rode bikes, and generally took part in what my son calls “the decathlon of white men sports.”

At dinner we discussed the books we were reading. Everyone else at the table was reading a health book called “Outlive,” about how to achieve a long life. The men were all jazzed about the idea of living to be a centenarian by monitoring their diet; the exercise part they already had down pat.

Our culture is obsessed with staving off the ravages of time. I used to be a model for Revlon cosmetics. Their slogan at the time was “Don’t lie about your age. Defy it.” I was in my 20s with skin as smooth as a boiled egg and no amount of skin care products was going to give an older person the complexion of a baby’s bottom. For women, it’s about erasing and denying aging.

The pursuit of a longer life and the denial of what happens to our bodies actually prevents us from loving the life we have. Aging is a synonym for living.

2500 years ago, the Greek historian Herodotus described a magical spring that restored the youth of people who drank from it. 500 years ago, Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon searched Florida for the Fountain of Youth. I can announce that I and many others have found it. It’s not a spring, although it puts a spring in my step. I have found a gratitude for life, and an appreciation for my years, by drinking in the wisdom of the Stoics.

I’m not going to be a centenarian. I have chronic health issues and it’s just not in the cards. Seneca wrote that “You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive.” So instead of living long, I choose to live deeply.

I am freed from the need to obsess about extending my life. The freedom of the Stoics is the dichotomy of control. I recognize that I cannot control the number of my days, but I can control their quality.

Seneca wrote that “Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.” I tip my hat to the diligent authors of “Outlive,” but I will follow Seneca’s advice.

I’m absolutely in favor of maximizing immediate and long-term health. I don’t row or ride bikes but I can walk. I am an enthusiast for following the advice of my doctors, all of whom are a credit to the human race and help keep my rickety corpus moving. I’m just unencumbered with the fear of death. This is one of the great gifts of Stoic freedom.

Seneca tells us, “count each separate day as a separate life. He who has thus prepared himself, he whose daily life has been a rounded whole, is easy in his mind; but those who live for hope alone find that the immediate future always slips from their grasp and that greed steals along in its place, and the fear of death, a curse which lays a curse upon everything else.” I will not spend my days rushing around to fill them with as many experiences as I can cram in. I am freed from the compulsion to put off the end or worry that I am missing out. I read slowly and deeply in the books I love. I linger in tiny museums to marvel at old bones. The freedom of the Stoics is to live my life and love the living of my life. Freedom is a gift we alone can give ourselves. As Seneca says, “Hurry up and live.”

Caterpillars undergo a nearly complete transformation in the course of their lives. This is called holometabolism. When a furry caterpillar reaches maturity, it creates a hard shell around its body called a chrysalis. Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar begins to decompose into a broth of the lyrically named “imaginal cells.” These cells carry the blueprint of the future.

In the chrysalis, the cells begin to re-assemble and recompose into a new form. When the new body is complete and ready, the miraculous insect cracks open the chrysalis with its legs; this is called “eclosion.” What emerges is a butterfly.

When you go through a tough season, there’s a tendency to wall yourself off and withdraw. This can be a valuable response, a way to focus on what’s important and avoid distractions. When the crisis is past, it’s time to recompose yourself and eclose. It can be scary. Yet as Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher wrote, “Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What’s closer to nature’s heart?”

If you jimmied open a chrysalis, which you shouldn’t do, you would see a few tiny structures remaining from the creature’s life as a caterpillar, such as the feet. It is a complex and major transformation but not a total one. There is even evidence that butterflies can retain the caterpillar’s memories. As you emerge from your chrysalis, what will you retain? Ask yourself, who are you now? What will you leave behind? And what will you bring with you?

When faced with such big questions and uncertain times, I look for guidance in my philosophical practice. A life philosophy is an attitude, it is your vision for your life. It is your purpose. It is a framework that helps you shape your life. It holds me together in troubling times and guides me in times of uncertainty.

For the past two decades I have found strength and solace in my daily habit of reading the Stoic philosophers. Epictetus, one of the wisest and wittiest Stoics who has ever drawn a breath, said that “If your choices are beautiful, so too, will you be.” This lit me up like a jar full of fireflies. The simplicity and clarity of Stoic wisdom is transcendent. If I were the type of person who used needles and ink to permanently apply words and symbols on my body, this quote would be my tramp stamp, right above the always-popular butterfly tattoo.

The Stoic philosophers believe that life is not against us, but for us. The obstacles we face are infused with opportunities. It is in our power to choose how we will react. Epictetus reminds us that “The trials you will encounter will introduce you to your strength.” I find inspiration to live life with deeper meaning and this ancient wisdom helps me cope with modern struggles.

Times of introspection and withdrawal are an opportunity to examine my life more closely. The first microscopes were called “fly glasses’‘ because they were used to study small insects. In the words of early microscope builder Peter Borell, “a flea is enlarged to the size of a camel, and a fly to the size of an elephant.” Stoicism is my butterfly glass as I take close inventory of my life and magnify myself to the size of a whale. Not all parts of me are flattered by this treatment.

If you look at a caterpillar under a microscope, you’d see that they don’t have a backbone. They are invertebrates. During their transformation in the chrysalis, butterflies grow a sturdy exoskeleton to support themselves. Stoicism is my exoskeleton, a strong philosophical scaffolding that supports and inspires me. My exoskeleton gives me resilience in the face of events beyond my control.

The metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies inspires me to reflect on the fact that we will all go through times of darkness and we can emerge as something beautiful. I am grateful that I can deepen my understanding of and connection to Stoicism, because I rely on it when I re-emerge into the world.

The “butterfly effect” is a poetic expression of chaos theory, the concept that infinitesimally small actions can cause world-changing events. MIT professor Edward Lorenz gave rise to the name when he posed the question, “can a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil cause a tornado in Texas?” For Lorenz, chaos theory is written on the wings of fluttering insects. A titanic occurrence is birthed in a microscopic action. From one tiny movement an immense result can occur.

Not long ago our whole world was upended by a microscopic thing, a virus, a bug. The pandemic was heartbreaking. But in this heartbreak was an opportunity to make changes in ourselves, to revise and do better. We always have the possibility to improve, reinforce values we want to keep, leave behind what is unnecessary, and find opportunities in new beginnings. In words attributed to Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher and politician, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

We are survivors. Let’s embrace it. Marcus Aurelius led the Roman empire through perpetual war and years of plague. He kept a journal of his thoughts, which are preserved in a book we call “Meditations.” He was a man with the weight of the world on him, yet his philosophy has been aptly summarized as, “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” We have all of these things before us. Caterpillars eat leaves, which is fine if you’re in the mood for a salad, but butterflies drink the sweet nectar of flowers. Let’s take off and find the sweetness in life.

When you’ve been through a lot and have had to make a lot of changes, it can seem daunting to have to remake ourselves again. But it is necessary. Maya Angelou said that “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the change it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”

Change doesn’t happen when everything is going fine. Things change because they have to change because they aren’t working. Take heart, you can do it. The butterfly effect shows us that great changes can come from small actions. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” You can begin now. It’s time to fly, you’ve earned your wings.

Epiphany also marks the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and as many have remarked, that comes with the gift of an awful lot of birds. Perhaps that’s what we’re supposed to eat during the Feast of the Epiphany.

The turning of the year is a time of transition. We’re on a journey, like the Magi. The calendar is just a human invention to keep track of time, but the arbitrary flip of the page has a powerful hold on us. When we’re in transition, we’re said to be in a “liminal space.” This refers to actual physical spaces, like the chained off serpentine lines for the roller coaster, or a hallway, or even driving down the road. The liminal space is something you pass through to get somewhere else.

Liminal comes from the Latin word “limen” meaning “threshold.” The ancients had liminal deities, gods and goddesses sacred to transitions. Janus, the Roman god, looked both forward and backward, which is why the first month in the western calendar is named January. The person who maintains a building honors the ancient god with the title “janitor”--they look after doors and thresholds.

For the Greeks, both Enodia and the powerful Hecate were goddesses of crossroads and thresholds. Many more classical gods were associated with transitions and change; clearly this was an important notion to our forebears. Perhaps they had in mind the observation of the philosopher Heraclitus that “change is the only constant in life.”

States of mind can be liminal, too. When you feel betwixt and between, waiting for something to happen, it can be a queasy, Jimmy-legged feeling. We’re tempted to retreat to the comforting past, or charge toward a hoped-for future, instead of being steady where we are.

It is when you are confronting change and transition that you need a life philosophy. This doesn’t have to be a complicated set of views about the nature of existence (though it can be if you want!). For me, a life philosophy is a set of rules and values that tell me what to think when I don’t know what to think.

I think something that challenges us is that we never truly get out of a liminal space to what’s on the other side. A human life is a continuous transfiguration. As Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” You better make friends with your-ever changing self; it makes these transitions far more interesting and a lot more fun. Living life is like the pursuit of happiness–the joy is in the pursuit. In Stoic terms, we are in pursuit of “eudaimonia,” or flourishing, by practicing our virtues. We may never fully attain it, but it gives purpose to our lives and meaning to moments that seem transitional and unfulfilled.

At my family’s farm, the place where the pond meets the earth is called an ecotone. In some places it is marshy, in others it is sandy. This kind of border, where one ecosystem transitions into another, is lavish with flora and fauna. Our pond’s edge is jumping with fish, frogs, turtles, red efts, beavers, river otters, minks and fisher cats, wood ducks and fly catchers. The great diversity found at such boundaries is called the “edge effect.”

Just as an ecotone flourishes with life, our liminal spaces are fertile fields for creativity. We move and transform in liminal spaces. Our identities are illuminated by how we navigate a life of infinite transitions.

We are all the protagonists of our own story and it’s tempting to believe that each one of us ought to be on a hero’s journey, on our way to accolades, wealth, fulfillment. I am on a philosopher’s journey instead. My rewards come in practicing my principles, and, as the saying goes, the friends I make along the way. These friends are both living and long since passed into dust. Seneca said, “There are obstacles in our path; so let us fight, and call to our assistance some helpers. ‘Whom,’ you say, ‘shall I call upon? Shall it be this man or that?’ There is another choice also open to you; you may go to the ancients; for they have the time to help you.”

The poet Thomas Gray wrote that “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” Practice memento mori, and remember that your long liminal space can come to an end at any time, so make the most of it. Or in the words that another English writer, William Makepeace Thackeray, wrote about the era in which Thomas Gray lived, “It was in the reign of George II that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”

How are you living your life of continuous change and transformation?