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
But fear borders upon grief, of which I have already said enough; but I must say a little more on that. Now, as grief proceeds from what is present, so does fear from future evil; so that some have said that fear is a certain part of grief: others have called fear the harbinger of trouble, which, as it were, introduces the ensuing evil. Now, the reasons that make what is present supportable, make what is to come very contemptible; for, with regard to both, we should take care to do nothing low or grovelling, soft or effeminate, mean or abject. But, notwithstanding we should speak of the inconstancy, imbecility, and levity of fear itself, yet it is of very great service to speak contemptuously of those very things of which we are afraid. So that it fell out very well, whether it was by accident or design, that I disputed the first and second day on death and pain - the two things that are the most dreaded: now, if what I then said was approved of, we are in a great degree freed from fear. And this is sufficient, as far as regards the opinion of evils. [31.]
— Cicero, Tusculans 4.64
Reflection
Cicero adds something the week has been building toward: the best treatment for fear of future events is to look clearly at the things themselves, not to avoid thinking about them, but to examine them and find that they do not deserve the authority you have given them. He mentions that two days of his Tusculan dialogues were spent on death and pain precisely because those are the fears that drive everything else. Future events are indifferents, but you rarely believe that in your gut until you have actually sat with the feared thing and looked at it. Contempt here does not mean dismissiveness; it means the calm that comes from honest examination.
Go deeper
What is the single future event you most avoid thinking about clearly, and what would you need to believe about yourself in order to face it honestly?
Practice
Look at the Feared Thing
Choose the one future scenario you are most reluctant to examine directly. Set a timer for ten minutes and write about it in plain terms: what exactly would happen, what would be lost, and what would remain. Do not try to resolve it or comfort yourself. Just describe it. Cicero's point is that the examination itself reduces the fear, not because the thing becomes less real, but because you stop giving it power through avoidance.