“Do not rule over imaginary kingdoms of endlessly proliferating possibilities.” Jesus says much the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount (though many of his later followers would interpret the Christian idea of eternal life as a reason to fixate on the future, not to ignore it). “Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself,” he advises. Then he adds the celebrated phrase “sufficient to the day is the evil thereof,” a line I’ve only ever been able to hear in a tone of wry amusement directed at his listeners: Do you first-century working-class
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