When I can't stop thinking about what might happen

Therefore I tell you, don't be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food, and the body more than clothing? See the birds of the sky, that they don't sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you of much more value than they?

"Which of you, by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan? Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't toil, neither do they spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won't he much more clothe you, you of little faith?

"Therefore don't be anxious, saying, 'What will we eat?', 'What will we drink?' or, 'With what will we be clothed?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first God's Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.

Therefore don't be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day's own evil is sufficient.

There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.

Aiming, therefore, at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself any inclination, however slight, toward the attainment of the others; but that you must entirely quit some of them, and for the present postpone the rest.

Seek at once, therefore, to be able to say to every unpleasing semblance, "You are but a semblance and by no means the real thing." And then examine it by those rules which you have; and first and chiefly by this: whether it concerns the things which are within our own power or those which are not; and if it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

"Mendicants, there are five things that cannot be had by any ascetic or brahmin or god or Māra or divinity or by anyone in the world. What five?

That someone liable to old age should not grow old. That someone liable to sickness should not get sick. That someone liable to death should not die. That someone liable to ending should not end. That someone liable to perishing should not perish.

An unlearned ordinary person has someone liable to old age who grows old. But they don't reflect on old age: 'It's not just me who has someone liable to old age who grows old. For as long as sentient beings come and go, pass away and are reborn, they all have someone liable to old age who grows old. If I were to sorrow and wail and lament, beating my breast and falling into confusion, just because someone liable to old age grows old, I'd lose my appetite and my physical appearance would deteriorate. My work wouldn't get done, my enemies would be encouraged, and my friends would be dispirited.'

And so, when someone liable to old age grows old, they sorrow and wail and lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. This is called an unlearned ordinary person struck by sorrow's poisoned arrow, who only mortifies themselves."

Worry feels like preparation. That is the trick of it.

Running the bad outcome again tonight will not make you readier for it than running it once did, and you have already run it once. The fourteenth rehearsal is not planning. It is the mind mistaking motion for progress, because sitting still with an unanswered question is harder than pacing.

A test worth applying: is there an action? If there is — a call to make, a number to check, a bag to pack — the worry has done its job, and you can thank it and go do the thing. If there isn't, then nothing further is being accomplished, and the only question left is what you would like to do with the hours between now and knowing.

Most of what we fear arrives differently than rehearsed, or not at all. Neither of those is a reason to stop caring. It is only a reason to stop paying tomorrow's price twice.

Mercury turns retrograde three or four times a year, and for about three weeks the sky suggests review rather than launch.

The traditional advice is narrow and practical: this is a period for the re-words. Revisit, reconsider, revise, reread the contract, return the call you let go. It is not a warning that the worst will happen. It is a statement about what kind of work the moment is suited to, which is a different claim altogether.

Underneath it sits the older idea that timing is real — that a beginning has a character given by the moment it is begun in, and that some hours are better suited to setting out than others. An astrologer asked to elect a date does not ask whether you are ready. They ask what the sky is doing, and then they wait for a better window.

Which is worth borrowing on the nights when the mind runs the same scenario for the fourteenth time. Some of what is coming is already in motion and is not yours to hurry. What is yours is the choice of when to move, and that choice keeps until the window opens.