Commentary

Seneca was writing to his friend Lucilius, who was spiraling into anticipatory dread about a minor legal matter. The observation lands with modern precision because neurological research confirms it: the amygdala cannot distinguish vividly imagined threats from real ones. Anxiety is almost always about a future that hasn’t happened — and statistically, rarely will. The Stoic prescription is not to suppress imagination but to interrogate it: Is this likely? Is this fatal? Can I handle it if it arrives? Usually the answer to the first two is no, and to the third, yes.