Hanging By a Thread

    By most accounts, I believe people are comfortable with accepting the pleasant side of what comes their way from fortune or fate. However, the reverses of fortune are not met with such an embrace. Why is this? One theory is that we suspend our belief about what reality has to offer us because, in the mean time, we don't want to think about the things we would prefer did not happen. This approach I will argue (as have others before me) is the worst of both worlds. The two criteria I will use to evaluate this approach are by how we see and treat a thing, a relationship, or an entity while we still share space and time with it and how we deal with its almost eventual absence.

    Let's look at the first situation or how I will call it, how much we appreciate something. The inevitable and literal outcome of thinking that something will always be yours (by denying you will ever be parted when you must) is simply taking something for granted. This is the state of not appreciating or enjoying something. The second scenario is what the response will be when we do lose something. Seeing that this occurrence is a broad departure from what we conceptualize, there is undoubtedly a shock in accepting these events.


    This is where the Stoic technique of negative visualization comes in. The premise of this technique is that we imagine the negative outcomes in our fates in order to prepare ourselves for these eventualities. Seneca argues that the shock is half the battle. On a side note, I don't think that negative visualization is the most apt term. What we're really doing is just realistically visualizing events. It's not a stretch to suppose that we envision the things we would prefer to happen without prompting ourselves. By creating mental space for the other possibilities, we are simply balancing our view of the future. We get the best of both worlds by being realistic since we can appreciate what we have when we have it and we can  prepare ourselves to be without it.


     The analogy that I use in balancing my thoughts is to imagine there being a tiny, thin thread that either holds something in my life or something (or myself) in existence altogether. This thread could snap at any moment and take everything and anything away at any moment...