Situation

When I can't stop thinking about what might happen

7 traditions are shelved here, each stating the question in its own words.

What if the act were the whole of it, and not what it brings?

A tradition spanning the Vedic scriptures, the Upanishads, the epics and a long history of philosophical schools, devotional movements and practice. The texts collected here come from the Upanishads and the Vedanta reading of them, which is concerned with the self, with action and its fruits, and with what remains when the senses are stilled. They are read as revealed scripture by their communities.

About this passageThe second verse addresses the reader who cannot take the first one — who does want the hundred years, and the house, and the work. It does not withdraw the offer. It gives a second route: keep acting, but perform the action for its own sake rather than for what it will bring you, and the results have no hold on you. Karma here means the deed and its consequence together, which is why the verse can say the consequence will not stick.

If one should desire to live in this world a hundred years, one should live performing Karma (righteous deeds). Thus thou mayest live; there is no other way. By doing this, Karma (the fruits of thy actions) will not defile thee.

In plainer words

Suppose you do want to live your hundred years. Then live them doing what is right, and keep doing it. There is no other way through. Do it like that and what your actions bring back will not stain you.

A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.

Confucian

If I look honestly and find nothing wrong, what is left to fear?

A tradition originating with Kongzi in China in the sixth century BCE and carried through the classics, commentaries and schools that grew around them. Its concern is conduct: how a person becomes reliable, how ritual and family order a life, and what composure under difficulty looks like in someone who has done the work. Its teaching survives mostly as recorded remarks, often answers to a named questioner rather than statements made to nobody.

About this passageSze-ma Niu was a disciple, and the Analects record him elsewhere as an anxious man; the chapter immediately following has him grieving that other men have brothers and he has none. He asks what the junzi — Legge's "superior man", meaning a person who has become reliable rather than one of high birth — is like, and gets an answer he does not accept, so he presses. The second answer relocates the question: it does not say anxiety is unwarranted, it says where to look to find out whether it is.

Sze-ma Niu asked about the superior man. The Master said, "The superior man has neither anxiety nor fear."

"Being without anxiety or fear!" said Niu;—"does this constitute what we call the superior man?"

The Master said, "When internal examination discovers nothing wrong, what is there to be anxious about, what is there to fear?"

In plainer words

Sze-ma Niu asked what a person of real character is like. Confucius said: they are neither anxious nor afraid. "That's all?" said Niu. Confucius said: look inside honestly, and if you find nothing wrong there, what is left to be anxious about? What is left to fear?

A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.

Christian

Whose job is it to provide what I need?

A tradition rooted in the Hebrew scriptures and in the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, carried through two millennia of churches, commentaries, liturgies and practices. Its texts are read as scripture by their communities.

About this passageAn excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount, a long block of teaching in Matthew's gospel. The section immediately before it contrasts two objects of devotion, and this passage follows from that with the word "therefore" — the argument is that anxiety about provision follows from where a person has placed their trust. The examples are deliberately ordinary: birds that do not farm, wildflowers that outdress a king, the day's own trouble.

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.

In plainer words

So stop worrying about whether you will have enough to eat or wear. There is more to your life than that. Look at the birds — no farming, no storehouses, and they are fed. You matter more than they do. And has worrying ever added a single minute to anyone's life? Look at wildflowers: they do nothing and they outshine a king in his best clothes. If God dresses grass that lasts a day, you are not going to be overlooked. Chasing food and clothes is what everyone does. Go after what actually matters, and the rest gets handled. Do not borrow tomorrow's trouble — today brought enough of its own.

A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.

Stoic

Is this within my power, or outside it?

A school of Greek and Roman philosophy taught from the third century BCE onward, concerned with judgement, action and the distinction between what a person controls and what they do not. Its surviving handbooks were written as practical training rather than theory.

About this passageThe opening chapter of the handbook, and the division everything else in it rests on. Epictetus sorts the whole of experience into two piles and puts body, property and reputation firmly in the second. The final paragraph gives the practical drill: meet each impression as it arrives, test which pile it belongs to, and if it belongs to the second, say so.

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.

In plainer words

Some things are up to you and some are not. Up to you: what you think, what you aim at, what you want, what you avoid — your own choices. Not up to you: your body, your possessions, your reputation, your job. Since what you are after is that big, do not let yourself get pulled even slightly towards the other things; drop some of them entirely and put the rest off for now. When something unpleasant turns up in your head, get in the habit of saying "you are just an impression, not the thing itself" — then check it: is this in my control or not? If it is not, tell yourself it is nothing to you.

A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.

Buddhist

Am I asking for something no one has ever been granted?

A tradition originating with the teaching of the Buddha in northern India and preserved in several textual collections. The discourses gathered here come from the Pali canon, recorded as talks given to particular people in particular circumstances.

About this passageA discourse listing five facts that no one — however powerful, human or divine — can arrange otherwise. The text then draws a distinction not between people who suffer loss and people who don't, but between those who have reflected on its universality beforehand and those who have not. The repeated phrase "it's not just me" is the hinge of the argument. In the full discourse this teaching is given to a king whose queen has died.

"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."

In plainer words

There are five things nobody can arrange otherwise — not the powerful, not the holy, not the gods. Things that age will age. Things that get sick will get sick. Things that die will die. Things that end will end. Things that fall apart will fall apart. When it happens to someone untrained, they never think: this is not only happening to me — it happens to everyone, always has. So they fall apart over it, lose their appetite, stop functioning, and none of the grieving changes the fact. That is what it looks like to be hit by sorrow and make it worse yourself.

A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.

Secular reflection

Is there an action here, or am I only rehearsing?

Reflection that does not appeal to a religious or philosophical authority. The pieces here were written for this collection and make no claim to be anything other than one way of putting a question.

About this passageWritten for this collection. It describes a habit rather than prescribing a cure, and assumes no belief on the reader's part.

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.

Astrology

What is already in motion, and what is mine to time?

A practice of reading meaning from the positions of the sun, moon and planets, attested in Babylonian, Hellenistic, Indian and Chinese forms and continuous in the West since antiquity. Western astrology divides the year into twelve signs and reads the movement of the planets as a description of timing, season and disposition.

About this passageA planet is "retrograde" when, seen from Earth, it appears to move backward against the stars; Mercury does this three or four times a year for about three weeks. Electional astrology is the branch concerned with choosing when to begin something, and it treats timing as a property of the moment rather than of the person acting.

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.

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