In a letter to his dear friend Lucilius, Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote: “There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

Chronic worriers tend to be more occupied by the future than by present circumstances. During the day, and even during the night, their thoughts wander in the mysterious realm of what’s yet to come, plotting, planning, and calculating on how to tackle an unfortunate fate that might rear its ugly head.

But even though they wish to control the future, they’ve never gone beyond the confines of the present. This is because the future doesn’t exist, except in our minds. We can’t live in the future, and we can’t predict it. Sure, we can plan for things that might come, but the present usually unfolds in different and often surprising ways.

Still, many of us fix our attention on the unknown and fantasize endlessly about how things that we can’t possibly predict will present themselves to us. Seneca observed this phenomenon in his friend Lucilius as well as in the people around him. He counterattacked this often tiresome and destructive stance towards the illusory domain of the future with Stoic reasoning, explaining why worrying about it is pointless, and advising us on what to do instead.

This video (Why Worry About What Isn't Real? | Seneca's Philosophy to End Worrying) explores Seneca’s antidotes to worry and groundless fears.

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00:00 - Intro
01:40 - Groundless fears
04:08 - Are your sufferings real or imaginary?
07:29 - Even bad fortune is fickle

#seneca #worrying #stoicism