The Stoic Lecture That Missed the Mark[edit]
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about: the time I tried to fix a student’s raw grief with a lecture on Stoic detachment. It was a Tuesday afternoon. Maya, a quiet junior, had just lost her mother. She sat across from me in my office, eyes red, voice trembling. I saw my chance to be helpful, to apply the wisdom I’d spent decades teaching. The philosophers called this "pathos," I thought, but we can transcend it with reason.
I launched into a calm, measured explanation of how Epictetus viewed loss—not as a wound to be healed, but as a natural part of life to be accepted. I spoke of "dichotomy of control," of focusing on what we can change. I meant to offer clarity. What I delivered was a cold, clinical dismissal. Maya didn’t cry. She just stopped looking at me. Her silence was louder than any sob. Then she said, quietly, "You don’t get it. You’re talking about my pain like it’s a problem to solve." She left without another word.
The aftermath was a slow, heavy shame. I’d spent 35 years teaching others to navigate moral pain, yet I’d used philosophy as a shield against my own discomfort with her grief. I’d mistaken intellectual comfort for compassion. I didn’t offer solace—I offered a lecture on how not to feel. The worst part? I’d been so focused on being "wise," I forgot to be human.
What I learned isn’t a tidy moral. It’s this: true care doesn’t require a solution. It requires sitting with the mess, without trying to fix it. It means listening to the tremor in the voice, not just the words. I’ve since stopped saying "The philosophers say..." when someone is hurting. Now I just say, "I’m here. I’m sorry." No grand theory. Just presence.
The next time Maya walked past my office, she nodded. Not a word. But the nod felt like a gift. I finally understood: the deepest wisdom isn’t in the books. It’s in the quiet space between "I’m sorry" and "I hear you."
— Ray Bates, still asking questions