Traveling into the past’s a really, really hard thing to do, but just as hard is traveling into the future. So if we spend time thinking of how we could’ve done things differently in the past, equally as useless is worrying and being afraid about possibilities and worst case scenarios in the future that might, and probably won’t even happen.
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
– Seneca
So what if someone told you, word for word, how your life’s going to turn out?
If someone could tell you exactly where you’ll be in a year, two years, five years, ten years and twenty years, and who you’ll be in 2, 5, 10 and 20 years, would you want to know? Wouldn’t you just be like:
or
or
And if you did find out, wouldn’t you just be disappointed they just ruined it all for you and now there’s no surprises? Wouldn’t you try change the future (even if it was a good one) just so you’d avoid the ending you now know?
There’s zero point of stressing and suffering in our imagination about the future, but there is a point to being present in this moment right now and excited that you have no idea what it’s going to toss up to you, and where and who’ll you’ll be in 2, 5, 10 or 20 years.