Feeling Scared about the Conflict in Ukraine? Don’t Worry, There’s No Need to be Anxious!
Is an apocalypse going to end the world in a giant ball of fire? — It doesn’t matter! There isn’t a Goddamn thing we can do about it.
If you’re not yet a Medium member and can’t afford the price of the subscription, don’t worry. You can read my content for free by subscribing to the ZZ Meditations Newsletter.
“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.”– Epictetus
The news is full of horrible predictions about our future.
War, climate change, radical politics, misinformation, diseases, and even aliens. Yes, aliens. Anything to frighten us, harvest our attention, and keep us glued to our screens.
We are falling for it with everything we’ve got. We click, buy, and show our loyalty to the cause. It’s monstrous viral marketing on steroids, crack, and cocaine simultaneously.
It’s a phenomenal business and political strategy. And it’s working.
Keeping up with all the news and current happening around the world makes us feel prepared for the future. It makes us feel intelligent and informed.
- Armed with all this “information,” we are now ready to face whatever is coming.
- If we know what is coming, we can prevent the worse from happening.
- We can protect and prepare so that we’ll survive the incoming apocalypse.
Right? Wrong!
All three of the above are absolute mental fallacies!
They are lies we tell ourselves for comfort but have no basis in reality.
If there is to be a Word War III, there is nothing we can do to stop it. We can’t prevent it because too many factors are at play — all of them out of our hands. Unless you’re one of the leading politicians, generals, or advisors to superpowers, you are helpless in the matter. The powers that be will get what they want, and you and I can do nothing about it. This isn’t defeatism; it’s realism.
If the bombs fall and armies cross borders, we will all suffer, regardless of our preparations. There will be varying degrees of suffering, but those will have more to do with luck and location than preparations.
Besides, are you sure you want to live in a post-apocalyptic world as one of the few survivors? Life is not a movie. That won’t be fun.
The same is true for natural disasters. Not many people would survive an extinction-level event, the kind that has wiped out most of life on our planet multiple times before. The odds are overwhelming that we will not survive such an event. Crocodiles might, but you and I, not so much.
As for preventive measures, we’re only fooling ourselves. Human imprint is nothing more than a spit in the ocean, no matter the size of our ego. Our planet faces dangers on a galactic scale all the time. It’s a fact of nature.
- Our Sun has a billion times more effect on our planet than anything we could ever do to it. A Sun’s fart can wipe out all life on the planet. Even a hiccup would act as a giant EMP (an Electromagnetic Pulse), wiping our electronics and throwing us back into the stone age, at least for a while.
- A volcano erupts, and we get a few years of darkness on the surface, killing 99% of all living things, plants, and animals alike.
- A comet hits our planet, and we’ll know just how the dinosaurs felt in their last days. “Oh, look, Francis. A shiny rock in the sky with a long sparkly tail. It’s so pretty… and we’re dead!”
Insert your favorite catastrophe, and you’ll come to the same conclusion.
The only way to personal happiness and inner peace is to determine what is under our control and what isn’t. Then we must accept that fact and let go of what we cannot control.
The alternative is madness!
It only makes sense to worry about the things we can actually change — today, not sometime in the distant future.
This is reality. Everything else is an illusion. A projection into the future that will drive us insane because no matter how much we want to play God and manipulate the universe, we always come short in the end.
We are like an ant arguing with a bulldozer. No matter what the ant believes it can do when that bulldozer comes, it’s game over.
We can’t predict what will happen in the future.
No matter how many algorithms and projections we come up with. We lack the necessary information. We can never have all the data and know all the factors at play in the grand scheme of things. It’s just not possible.
How many times has the freaking weatherman been wrong? When making a next-day forecast! What are his odds of accuracy for decades in the future?
All these projections are, is fortune-telling but with far worse historical accuracy!
People who promote them naturally won’t admit this, and even when presented with clear proof of their inability to foretell the future, they resort to finding excuses instead of acknowledging the reality of things. We, humans, have very fleeting memories and keep falling for the same nonsense over and over again. If someone is wrong nine times out of ten, why listen to them now? What good has that ever done?
The whole future lies in uncertainty, which is the hardest thing for humanity to accept, individually and collectively.
There is no point in fighting reality. We can do it, but reality will always win!
- How many prophecies made by scientists (or quacks) and model makers have come true?
- How many times were all the models wrong, and the exact opposite happened than what was predicted?
- How many times was an apocalypse due, and nothing happened?
If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll know the answer is all of them have failed! Projections are rarely even within the ballpark of hitting the goal. Especially the “world is ending” kind. They don’t have to be. This is not their purpose.
They aren’t concerned with the truth — only spreading fear and achieving their objective, whatever that may be. Here’s a hint. It’s usually about money.
Imagine constantly panicking, locking yourself up in some shelter, completely pausing life because you believed these predictions.
You’d feel dumb, wouldn’t you?
Now realize you’re doing the same thing emotionally every single day you waste worrying about the far future and things out of your control.
Here’s the unfiltered truth:
- We can’t foretell the future; no one can. Anything is possible at any time. There are too many factors at play. Most are hidden from our view.
- There is no certainty in this life and no stagnation. Everything is constantly changing, without exceptions.
- No matter how much we try, we cannot prevent some overwhelming, tragic situation. It’s just not in our power. This is especially true for the individual.
- There is no safety on this planet or in this reality. We are all going to die, it’s only a matter of time, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Worst of all, we can never know when our time is due.
- Worrying about the future is an absolute waste of time!
I say this last bit as someone obsessed with maintaining control and trying to predict the future. I have fought against these fundamental truths all my life and suffered terribly for it. But at some point, reason must prevail.
We are therefore faced with the following options:
- We can spend the rest of our lives frightened and worried and miss out on the beauty of life in the present. (Or)
- We can ground ourselves in the moment, fully enjoying the time we have, focusing on the things within our control, and letting the future take care of itself.
One path leads to guaranteed misery and suffering, and the other is the only way to achieve inner peace, satisfaction, and happiness.
The choice is yours.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. If the world ends, it will end. What will happen, will happen. No amount of worrying will make the slightest dent in our probability of survival.
Unless it’s your job to worry about these things, and you have some control and direct influence over what transpires on the global stage, it’s all just a giant waste of time, energy, and life.
Do you now see there is no point in worrying about the war from afar?
So many things can go wrong that we can never prevent them all. We can’t even foresee them. I could list a hundred ways this local conflict can turn into WWIII, but I would still miss a billion other possibilities and situations.
How could we possibly foresee and prevent everything? We can’t.
Is the conflict going to spill over into world war three? — I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter!
What will be, will be. Unless you’re the one manipulating the world, negotiating with superpowers, or sitting at the desk with the elite leaders of the world, there is nothing you can do to change what is coming.
Equally, unless you are willing to completely isolate yourself, build a bunker and load it up, waiting for shit to hit the proverbial fan, you’re odds of surviving an all-out war is a matter of luck more than preparation. If anything, running away is usually the biggest predictor of survival in war. But where to run in WWIII, and how to do it in time?
War is a terrible thing. I feel for the people of Ukraine. I do. It’s a shitty situation they’ve ended up in, and I honestly don’t know how this will end. I don’t hold any illusions.
These are precarious times we live in. One “flap of the wrong butterfly” and fire will rain down on us all.
But I’m not worried!
Because no amount of worrying will make the tiniest difference to the outcome, it will only make me feel sad, scared, and miserable.
I choose to be an optimist. I hope that we will pull through somehow with cooler heads prevailing. If I were a betting man (I am not), I would say the odds are good for avoiding the worst in the near future. But I could be very, very wrong.
The thing is — it doesn’t matter!
Until that day, I’ll focus on my family and the things I love. I choose happiness, and it is a choice. Make no mistake about it. I see no benefit in worrying — only severe damage to my mental and physical health.
That, my friends, is the choice we must all make.
- Will we give in to our fears and live a miserable life full of self-imposed suffering, or will we deliberately look optimistically toward the future?
- Will we spend our time here on earth miserable or happy?
- Will we focus on the now or dream of the future that may or may not come?
The choice is yours. Choose carefully.
