QUOTE: Today's pearl of wisdom comes via Alex Massie, in the course of praising Silent Cal:
"If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you."
So very true. I have long been of the opinion Keirkegaard got it right in 'The Rotation of Crops' from Either/Or. Many people believe the way you deal with problems is by solving them; I can only find this entirely bewildering. Almost no problem is as bad as it seems when it first appears, and there is a real art to pausing just long enough to contemplate options (including the option of doing nothing). Most people don't think in terms of probabilities--a problem is not 'how bad things will be if worse comes to worse,' it's that times the chance the worse actually will come to worse. My math is a little fuzzy, but I'm fairly confident that means things are never quite so bad as they appear.
Closely related to this is a piece of advice I find myself giving to friends worried about what the future holds (with respect to jobs, funding, internships/fellowships): if things do go badly, there will be plenty of time to worry about it then--no need to get ahead of yourself.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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