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Nobody Can Predict the Future
This can be frustrating for many people — but it can truly be a good thing, too.
When you woke up today, you may or may not have had a plan. Perhaps you have a daily routine that you will be following, and the expected outcome of that is fairly constant.
You know who you are, you know what you will be doing…and then something happens. Your car breaks down. Someone you know has gotten sick or died. The water in your home isn’t running. You woke up with a tweaked back and can barely move.
There was no way to predict any of that. Despite your plans and expectations for how the day would go — now it will be different. You didn’t see any of that coming.
The truth is that nobody can predict the future. That applies to the immediate, day-to-day future, as well as the distant future.
For a lot of people, this is infuriating. The lack of control that this represents is unacceptable, so they either become anxious about prospects, depressed at the expectation of loss or suffering, or angry that something might not go as planned.
The uncertainty inherent in the future can be extremely harmful mentally, emotionally, and physically. To make matters worse, whole industries make money on predicting the future. This includes…