WebMDave

I am a retired senior citizen. With fewer distractions and obligations, the quiet has grown louder — and with it, a deep, gnawing question:  Does anything really matter? The answer I keep arriving at, disturbingly but persistently, is: No. Not really. Not in the long run. Empires rise and fall. The sun will burn out. Everything I have ever done, thought, or loved will be forgotten. Even the Earth itself will one day cease to exist. What’s the point of trying to live “well” when I’m a temporary blip, a speck of dust floating in a cosmic shrug? That’s where I am. This, I suppose, is what some would call an existential crisis . It feels more like existential clarity—and it’s unsettling. But I’ve been walking the Stoic path for a while now. I'm a Prokopton — a student of Stoicism, someone hopefully progressing toward wisdom, even if imperfectly. The Stoics never promised comfort. They promised coherence. A way to live honestly in a world that doesn’t owe us meaning or anyt...

W hen I was a Christian, I was taught to bring my pain, confusion, and doubt to the foot of the cross. “You can be healed,” I was told. “ If you have faith, God will make a way .” But the promised healing never came. When my faith-filled prayers were answered with silence, the reassuring comments of “It’s all part of God’s plan” started to sound like empty rhetoric. For that reason and many others, I eventually left Christianity, carrying a burden of spiritual scaring. Now what? Seek psychological help? Eliminate my magical thinking by actually studying science? I tried those paths, and they did help. However, somewhere along the way, I quietly, curiously stumbled onto the writings of modern and ancient philosophers. I mostly skipped the dry texts presented by academia, being more drawn to contemporary writers who bring philosophy alive. When I think of medicine, I often picture pills, prescriptions, or white-coated professionals poking at problems with stethoscopes. But lon...

F or the better half of my life, I was a dedicated Christian. My faith shaped how I interpreted the world, how I related to others, and how I understood meaning and morality. In my 40s, I began to question — not out of a desire to sin (the usual Christian dismissal for my current disbelief), but out of a deep and unsettling sense that the religious world I inhabited no longer made sense to me. What followed was a liberating and empowering transition. After many years of identifying as a timidly skeptical ex-Christian, I discovered Stoicism, an ancient philosophy that had eluded me until then. Now, I proudly identify as a Stoic Prokopton — a term that signifies progress, not perfection. I am not a sage, not a master, not a know-it-all, but simply someone walking the path with intention and empowerment. Why I Moved Away from Christianity My faith had been my primary source of community, identity, and purpose. The more I learned about Christianity, the more I noticed the contradictory n...