Kev is mid-fall, and the screaming started way before the ground did. Seneca saw this coming about two thousand years ago.
thatBB dictionary
panic;
(noun)
Screaming at the ground while you’re still nowhere near it.
Why we suffer before anything happens
Your brain is a great simulator and a terrible narrator. It runs the worst version of tomorrow, plays it in surround sound, and lets you feel all of it tonight. The fall hasn’t happened yet. The landing might be fine. But the suffering is already here, paid in full, in advance.
What would a stoic do?
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Seneca, Letters 13.4 (trans. R. M. Gummere)
Seneca wrote this to his friend Lucilius, a billionaire by Roman standards, who still lost sleep over things that hadn’t happened. That’s the comfort: money and status don’t fix it. Noticing where you actually are does. You’re still far from hitting the ground, my friends. Let’s quit screaming at the clouds.
Try this: three moves mid-fall
- Check the altitude. What has actually happened so far? Only that. Not the next three chapters.
- Split the fall from the story. The fall is the fact. The screaming is the story you add on the way down.
- Do the next useful thing. Send the email, make the call. Your woes are just a part of your origin story.
Still far from the ground. Keep grinding; things will eventually work out. meow meow, kev
