Don’t Worry; Have A Happy New Year!

Another Way To Deal With Stress, According To The Movies

Jan 3, 2023

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They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.

Perhaps you are the type of person who gets stressed out easily. Maybe the end of the year gets to you. It may be that the holiday season with all its demands and the expectations for the new year weigh heavily on you. In that case you are among the many whom the great stoic philosopher from Ancient Rome, Seneca the Younger, is counseling here:

The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.

There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes; since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you; they certainly have not yet come.

The truth is nothing will harm you unless you let it, or can’t escape it. If you can’t prevent a harm there is no use in wasting any energy on worrying about it. Also, there is no use in crying over it after it happens since it can’t be undone. So why not try to be free of troublesome thoughts? Why not try to calm your mind?

There is real enlightened wisdom in the line spoken by one of the main characters in the 1948 film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, “the worst ain’t so bad when it finally happens.” Whatever bad thing happens, it probably won’t crush you, so why suffer in expectation beforehand, particularly when there is a chance nothing bad will happen? All that wasted energy being given to negative thoughts, pessimistic attitudes, and catastrophizing. All that life wasted feeling bad, when it could have been used to have positive, optimistic, whimsical, lovely thoughts instead.

You do yourself more harm, that is, you harm yourself, by worrying about the future. There is a splendid American saying that sums up how one really ought to look at things, which is, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” If trouble really appears, that is of concern only to a future you, and if in the present you stay positive, then you’ll give future you the confidence to handle any sort of problem adroitly and with flair.

Need some more examples? Here are a few movies where some worrywart, neurotic characters figure out how to be free of their anxieties and enjoy life for once:

Life Lesson: Don’t let fear paralyze you.
🍿Movie Scene Link (movie quote)

Life Lesson: Figure out what you really are afraid of.
🍿Movie Scene Link (movie quote)

Life Lesson: “But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.”
― Albert Camus
🍿Movie Scene Link (movie quote)

Life Lesson: If you want to have a good relationship with someone, then don’t hold back. Give it all you’ve got.
🍿Movie Scene Link (movie quote)

Life Lesson: A good friend can make all the difference in your life.
🍿Movie Scene Link (movie quote)

Please take heed of the last word to the wise, coming to you from a man who lived over 2,000 years ago:

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

— Seneca

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