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Stoicism: The Still Point in a Turning World

  • graysonpitcock
  • Aug 2
  • 1 min read

Updated: Aug 13

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Stoicism is often mistaken for coldness, people usually picture a sage, immune to joy or grief, detached from life. But that isn’t what the Stoics taught. Their philosophy wasn’t about shutting down feeling, it was about finding steadiness. Picture a tree in the wind: the branches bend, the storms pass, but the roots hold. Stoicism is learning to live from those roots.


At its heart, Stoicism is a philosophy of control and perspective. It divides life into two domains: the things we can influence, and the things we cannot. Our actions, our choices, our judgments all belong to us, but fortune, other people’s behavior, the rise and fall of events, these do not. The Stoic discipline is to invest energy only where it matters, and to meet everything else with calm acceptance.


Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean retreating from life. Marcus Aurelius ruled an empire; Seneca advised emperors. They weren’t hiding in caves. They were fully immersed in the mess of human affairs, yet they carried with them a discipline: to act justly and to endure whatever came without collapsing under it.


What makes Stoicism resonate in the modern world is that it speaks to a condition we still haven’t outgrown: fragility. Our lives remain vulnerable to fortune.


In a noisy and restless world, the Stoics invite us back to that still point,

the place inside us that no storm can touch.

 
 
 

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About Me

My name is Grayson Pitcock. I founded Philosophy Check, a philosophy blog and student discussion club.

I am a Bergen Catholic High School student and have spent most of my life living in Tenafly, which occupies five square miles in the northern end of New Jersey. With a 41.7% minority population, my hometown is diverse. Neighbors on my street speak Korean, Hebrew, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian. 

My family is multicultural. One side of my family, from the Midwest, has deep American roots dating back to the Revolutionary War, and the other side, from the East Coast, is a second-generation immigrant family of Korean ancestry. Although many aspects of my family upbringing may sound familiar, my multicultural background has enabled me to experience contrasting ideas, beliefs, and perspectives representing the diverse opinions of this vast country. Building relationships across differences happens nearly daily, both within and outside my family. 

I am interested in understanding how people can disagree profoundly yet still share space, community, and even friendship. Living in this environment has made me deeply curious about how people arrive at their beliefs, how truth is constructed and contested, and what it means to live ethically in a pluralistic society. I found myself drawn to philosophy because I was fascinated by the frameworks we use to ask questions about justice, morality, freedom, and self.

In my free time, my background also leads me to look for ways to bring people together in community advocacy, to support youth mental health and environmental justice. This means showing up fully, learning as I go, and getting others with me. Whether between different groups at school or in conversations where people don’t agree, I enjoy challenging myself and those around me to question their assumptions and see all sides of our choices while bridging gaps across divides. 

I am a part of a Youth Advisory Board for NJ4S, a state-led initiative that advocates for youth mental wellness in New Jersey. The Youth Advisory Board is a group of health care professionals, community organizers, and students who meet in person or virtually every month. Of the many communities that I am involved in, this one is significant to me in that I can see in others sharing the same belief I hold in community advocacy, of gathering experiences and building networks between communities and policymakers that can address the health needs of local communities in northern New Jersey. 

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