A Stoic Peacefulness

A Stoic Peacefulness

John Paul Derryberry

I had a good chuckle as I wandered through my favorite coffee shop in my town. An acquaintance I know was reading a book about the Stoics. He raved about the insight it was providing him about how to navigate life. Considering I stumbled into an intro to philosophy class over 22 years ago and fell in love with the thought process of not finding the correct answer, but with the complex discussion of life and the gray area of right and wrong, and how to conduct yourself as a human. I didn't have it on my bingo card that knowledge of the Stoics would come in handy all these years later, but here we were.

After walking away from that conversation, I examined my relationship with that first foray into philosophy all those years ago. I was still driven pretty much by impulse, responsibility avoidance, trauma response, and lack of emotional control when I walked into that class ten minutes late, and Professor Jones asked me to sit in the front of the class for being late. The memory is fuzzy about how it unfolded, but reading about a group of people who started with "there is only so much one can control in their life" began to shift my thinking about what had transpired in my young life.

Then came the whole "build your character on wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance was a jolt to my process thinking. I began to think about what I wanted my story to be, as I felt that was something I could control in life.  The first thing I realized was that I wanted my story to be hopeful, which it currently was not. I had to find peace with what transpired in my life so I could navigate whatever came next in life. Peace wasn’t going to just happen, it takes work. There is no easy button to all of this. I discovered peace in the middle of my struggle by focusing on what my trauma gave me, not what it took away. Look, therapy is great, and I encourage it, but I didn't find my growth by looking inward at first. I found it in spending my time discussing ideas, not in the search for answers but in the search for a truth.

Coming to peace with it all is not a single thought or answer that ties everything together in a nice, neat bow. Life does not work that way, it’s messy. My journey to coming to peace with what has transpired in my life was a long process of acknowledging so much of what happened was out of my control. 22 years later, it’s still a process of navigating the gray area and knowing the answers will change, fluctuate, and morph over the long arc of life. It’s a good place to be, finding peace with life- knowing peace will fade away from life because of some event at some point. The key is to know you can find it again by looking for truths not answers.

I didn’t know Stoicism would have a moment in 2026; I also didn’t know I would have a moment with Stoicism in 2004. Life is funny that way; we often think we have it all figured out, only to have to redefine it again and again and again. I guess those guys were on to something way back when. We find ourselves through wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance, not emotional swings. Heck, the diversion we are seeing in our communities comes from so many of us acting on emotional swings, not as rational, thoughtful, caring people. Maybe we need more Stoics to bring about peaceful interactions, teaching us all that we cannot control nearly as much as we think we can, but we can find peace by letting go and moving forward with care and compassion for others.