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Welcome back to another episode of practical stoicism.

I'm Tanner Campbell, and before we start today, I'd like to answer a question that was submitted to me a couple of weeks ago, but that I've only just seen.

That question was, why shouldn't we think about the future?

I understand not thinking about the past, but I don't see a problem with thinking about

the future. Stoicism doesn't tell us that thinking about the future is bad, only that worrying

about the future in such a way that it causes us to act poorly in the present is bad. When we think

about the future, we tend to be thinking either, won't it be great if that happens? I'll be so happy.

And then we get lost in this sort of

daydream about what's next instead of paying attention to what is right now. That's bad because

being the best we can be, right now, takes our full attention. Or, on the other hand, we might be

thinking about the future negatively. Oh no, that might happen. How can I avoid that happening?

I don't want that to happen.

Suddenly our behavior in the present becomes about avoiding something in the future that we fear.

But behavior in the present that is in service to a future fear, in service to avoiding one, that is,

isn't the sort of behavior one needs to express to be their best in the present.

The present is all we really have.

And by thinking too much about the past or the future, by being emotionally controlled by either,

we exist outside of what the Buddhists would call the now, and what the stoics simply call

...