Free of Hope and Fear
This week you are learning about being "free of hope and fear," a state the Stoics sometimes called apatheia (in Greek, "a-PATH-ee-ah"), which simply means freedom from the disruptive passions that jerk us around. Hope and fear are a matched pair: both are the mind running ahead of the present moment, grasping at what might go well or bracing against what might go badly. Neither is happening right now, yet both can consume your entire day. The Stoics did not want you to become cold or indifferent; they wanted you to stop being a hostage to events that exist only in your imagination.
Passage
I am not surprised that they proceed in this way; each alike belongs to a mind that is in suspense, a mind that is fretted by looking forward to the future. But the chief cause of both these ills is that we do not adapt ourselves to the present, but send our thoughts a long way ahead. And so foresight, the noblest blessing of the human race, becomes perverted.
— Seneca, Letters 5.8
Reflection
Yesterday you saw how hope and fear travel together. Today Seneca names the engine that drives both: we send our thoughts far into the future and forget to come back. This is the perversion of foresight. Planning and thinking ahead are genuine human gifts, but when the mind lives permanently in the future, it turns that gift into a source of constant agitation. Hope and fear are both future-tense emotions. They require you to mentally leave the present and take up residence somewhere that does not yet exist. Freedom from hope and fear begins, practically speaking, with returning to where you actually are.
Go deeper
In a typical day, what specific moments pull your mind furthest into the future, and what do you lose in the present while you are there?
Practice
The Return
Set a single reminder on your phone for sometime this afternoon. When it goes off, stop and ask: where is my mind right now? Is it in the present, or is it living in some future scenario, whether feared or hoped for? Spend two minutes simply noting what is actually happening around you and inside you at that exact moment. No judgment, just observation.