Here Is Why Worrying About Your Future Is Nonsense
Have you ever worried more about future circumstances than current present circumstances? This might frighten you, attack you, or even worse destroy your daily life. We try to control the future circumstances, but it never goes beyond the confines of the present.
As Seneca once said “There are more things, likely to frighten us than there are to crush, we suffer more often in imagination, than in reality.”
So, why are we scared of future circumstances?
According to Seneca, the future doesn’t exist except we imagine it in our minds. We try to predict the future and try to plan for things yet to come. But the reality is usually different and often suprising.
Still many people focus solely on the future on how to be prepared and how we are going to deal with the future circumstances.
As Seneca noticed with Stoic approach, that worrying about the future circumstances is pointless and he advises us what to do instead.
Here are Seneca’s antidotes to worry and groundless fears.
Seneca’s view that the future doesn’t exist, does confirm however that what is happening as of right now reading this article will be the past.
Think about being stuck in traffic on a highway, as you watch how everybody slowly drives, you can not predict exactly when the traffic will end, you can only watch the long traffic line and people driving past by you.
So, you know what is ahead, but no matter what you try and how well you are prepared for it, you will be always have to deall with wild guesses on when the traffic will end.
That is the reason why you can not control the future as you imagine at the end of the day.
However, many people are overwhelmed by these ideas, causing them to suffer from groundless fears based on nothing, but speculation instead of truth.
Seneca noticed that some things affect us before they appear and other things affect us when they in reality, never happen.
According to Seneca, it is a habit that we built, to imagine, exaggerate or anticipate misery.
Or as Seneca states: “It twists into the worst construction some word of doubtful meaning: or it fancies some personal grudge to be more serious than it really is, considering not how angry the enemy is, but to what lengths he may go if he is angry.”
It is an unpleasant habit, which can make you sick.
Luckily, Seneca’s provide us with antidotes.
First of all, if some unfortunate event happens, stay grounded and cobe with it. It may perceive as an unfortunate event, but it usually turns out to be different, than what we thought.
The problem is that worrying about something, will affect us before an event takes place.
For example, we’re anxious about taking an exam, and the weeks before we worry about it every day, “Will I black out?” “Will I screw it up?” But the anxiety we experience during the exam is minor compared to what we endured the weeks before. You might think “If I fail, my life is over.”, but this is not true, because it has not happened yet.
What Seneca advises us to do instead: ask yourself if your sufferings are real or imaginary?
According to Seneca, it’s better to trust in ourselves and take counsel with our feelings independently, as we know our affairs better than anyone else does. We’re easily affected by the opinions and views of other people.
Another antidote that Seneca proposes is being open-minded and do not judge fate.
Looking at our human ignorance not only about what will happen and how these events will effect us, but also concerning the nature of these events, and how they exactly affect our lives, it’s better to be careful when judging fate.
This doesn’t mean that we should deny that bad things might happen. Seneca doesn’t encourage to be ignorant of the terrible fates that could occur.
He does advocate for observing with care.
On the one hand, it’s unwise to be in denial of misfortune.
On the other hand, we shouldn’t let the smallest sign of adversity throw us into a panic.
So, the key is finding the sweet spot between ignorance and obsession.
At the end, if we keep an open mind about the nature of events, knowing that not everything is what it seems, we’ll realize that our judgements about future and present events are often misguided and our fears concerning them groundless.
And even if it’s certain that misfortune is coming your way, if it’s not yet arrived, then why spend the time beforehand suffering in your imagination?
Thank you for reading!
