Future Events as Indifferents
This week you are going to study a concept the Stoics called "indifferents" (in Greek, "adiaphora," meaning things that are neither good nor bad in themselves) as they apply specifically to the future. A future event, whether illness, loss, failure, or death, is not good or evil on its own; only your judgment about it makes it so. That single insight is the key to understanding Stoic anxiety: you suffer not because bad things are coming, but because you treat uncertain future events as if they were already confirmed evils. This week you will learn to see future events clearly for what they are, and find out what that means for the fear and worry you carry every day.
Passage
Accordingly, weigh carefully your hopes as well as your fears, and whenever all the elements are in doubt, decide in your own favour; believe what you prefer. And if fear wins a majority of the votes, incline in the other direction anyhow, and cease to harass your soul, reflecting continually that most mortals, even when no troubles are actually at hand or are certainly to be expected in the future, become excited and disquieted. No one calls a halt on himself, when he begins to be urged ahead; nor does he regulate his alarm according to the truth. No one says; “The author of the story is a fool, and he who has believed it is a fool, as well as he who fabricated it.” We let ourselves drift with every breeze; we are frightened at uncertainties, just as if they were certain. We observe no moderation. The slightest thing turns the scales and throws us forthwith into a panic.
— Seneca, Letters 13.13
Reflection
Seneca now gets practical and a little blunt: most of the things you fear are not confirmed threats, they are stories. Someone told you something, or you told yourself something, and you treated it as fact. Future events are indifferents partly because they are uncertain, and Seneca is pointing out that your nervous system rarely respects that uncertainty. He is not saying 'think positive'; he is saying that when the evidence is genuinely unclear, you are allowed to weigh it fairly rather than automatically assuming the worst reading is the most honest one.
Go deeper
Think of a worry you have carried for more than a week: what actual evidence would you need in order to take it seriously, and do you have that evidence right now?
Practice
Cross-Examine the Story
Pick one worry that is active for you today. Write it down as a single sentence claim: for example, 'I am going to fail at this project.' Now write two questions underneath it: first, 'What is the actual evidence for this?' and second, 'What is the evidence against it?' You are not trying to talk yourself out of the worry. You are practising what Seneca calls regulating your alarm according to the truth.