Worry and Control

[emjay]

Free will is not the issue because determinism doesn't imply fatalism.

And this is about the uncomfortable uncertainty  of whether I am being too fatalistic and missing out or not fatalistic enough and struggling unnecessarily.

The philosopher Seneca for instance believed that doing nothing about things you can do something about is no worse than trying to do something about something you cannot do anything about.

I am not so sure. Can we really afford to be so Stoic about this? We all have but one short life and life is a long emergency. Can we really afford to miss out on experiences?

How often is a totally wasted effort trying to control things we cannot because we think we can worth the risk?

How often is not wasting any effort at all but as a result not bothering to try to control some things we in fact can and in fact missing out worth it?

This is the uncertainty. This is the anxiety. It depends so much and that is tense. Decisions matter and making the right ones matter. Especially long term committments.

The thing about worry is that on the one hand it could be considered a useful tool in the sense that it lets you examine a lot of scenarios and plan for the future but on the other hand it is unpleasant because it guarantees that you'll imaginatively experience the worst case scenarios every time. And I think the benefits of the former don't outweigh the pain of the latter, so am inclined to see all worry as a bad thing. I think I have matured in that regard and generally worry a lot less. I find writing a problem down to be an excellent substitute because it stops you getting too emotionally drawn into the situation - so even when you're looking at the worst case scenario you don't feel the pain associated with it.

I'm painfully shy in real life and in the past let worry stop me doing a lot of things but these days I tend to just jump in and worry about it later (knowing that I can then apply my clockwork universe thinking to it   ). I agreed, just to help out a friend, to do a charity event in drag. In the past that would've been terrifying for me, especially as I had agreed long in advance and therefore would've had plenty of time to worry about it and talk myself out of it, but this time it was relatively easy just to say 'I'll cross that bridge when I come to it' and leave worrying about it till the day. And on the day it was hell whilst I was doing it but it was soon over and that was that. So in other words, clockwork universe combined with cross that bridge when I come to it really works for me as a way of defeating worry and trying new things - so not fatalistic determinism.

You could call the above reckless determinism instead and then we're back where we started, trying to find the right balance. I don't know on that to be honest, but I do think the process of worry itself doesn't need to be as painful as we tend to let it be.