Stoic Tools for Aging Well

Facilitator: Mac McNeill, (970) 631-2710, mcneil0115@comcast.net Dates: Tuesdays, January 6 — February 24, 2026 Time: 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM Text: Massimo Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic (Amazon cost: $14) Presentations: None Location: Foxtail 2, Senior Center, Class limit: 18

“Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it.” —Seneca

This eight-week course explores how Stoic philosophy offers practical tools for the realities of later life: changing roles, health setbacks, and loss. We’ll ground every tool in the virtues that guide its use - wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.

Our text is Massimo Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic (Amazon cost: $14). Weekly readings from the book will introduce the key ideas we’ll discuss and apply to daily life.

Enrollment is limited to 18. The class meets as a discussion seminar with short facilitator presentations and occasional videos introducing key Stoics and central ideas. No prior philosophy background is needed, and no presentations are required.

Each week, we’ll explore a few simple tools that might help us face daily challenges with steadiness and perspective. You’ll experiment with brief reflections, short writing exercises, and small shifts in how you interpret events - especially when things don’t go as planned. Between sessions, you’ll try these ideas in your own life and share what you noticed the following week. All sharing is voluntary.

This course isn’t about finding a single answer, but about discovering which ideas and habits truly help us live with greater calm, gratitude, and purpose. Join us as we explore this centuries-old philosophy newly rediscovered as a source of strength and guidance for the challenges of our time.

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day.” —Seneca