The future will never provide the reassurance you seek from it
As the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics understood, much of our suffering arises from attempting to control what is not in our control. And the main thing we try but fail to control is the future. We want to know, from our vantage point in the present, that things will be OK later on. But we never can.
It’s freeing to grasp that no amount of fretting will ever alter this truth. It’s still useful to make plans. But do that with the awareness that a plan is only ever a present-moment statement of intent, not a lasso thrown around the future to bring it under control.
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CURATED FROM
Oliver Burkeman's last column: the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life
theguardian.com
11 ideas
·75 reads
IDEAS CURATED BY
The writer and journalist Oliver Burkeman shares a few lessons from his time writing his "This column will change your life" for the Guardian.
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