Dealing with hope like an ancient Greek
The Great Philosophers 2: The Stoics
The Stoics (...) believed that anxiety flourishes in the gap between what we fear might, and what we hope could, happen. The larger the gap, the greater will be the oscillations and disturbances of mood.
To regain calm, what we need to do is systematically and intelligently crush every last vestige of hope. Rather than appease ourselves with sunny tales, it is far better – the Stoics proposed – to courageously come to terms with the very worst possibilities – and then make ourselves entirely at home with them. When we look our fears in the face and imagine what life might be like if they came true, we stand to come to a crucial realisation: we will cope. We will cope even if we had to go to prison, even if we lost all our money, even if we were publicly shamed, even if our loved ones left us, and even if the growth turned out to be malignant (the Stoics were firm believers in suicide).
I have been proposing a Stoic response to the global crisis for many years now. Not only do I advocate "intelligently crushing every last vestige of hope" I also recommend doing the same to fear. We have no way of telling how things will unfold, the only certainty is that it will be neither as we fear nor as we hope. Fearing a negative outcome and hoping for a positive one are equally foolish.
Leave hope and fear by the side of the road. Walk the journey in your own shoes. Feel the road beneath your feet and the sun and rain on your face. You walk only in the present, not in the past or the future. If you can do that well, all else becomes irrelevant.
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