Fear that moves your feet

A dentist looks at an X-ray and says a tooth will need work soon, or a lot more work later. Nobody needs that sentence repeated. The fear is small, specific and useful. You book the appointment.

That is the good kind of imagined disaster. You see the bad outcome clearly enough, early enough, to do something about it.

Most of the disasters on offer at night are not like that. They arrive one after another on a lit screen, each worse than the last, polished and repeated and argued over until they feel like weather. There is always a new one, because a new one is what keeps people looking, and people looking is what pays.

The effect is the opposite of the dentist. A specific fear points somewhere. An endless one points everywhere, which is the same as nowhere. After an hour of it, a person has felt a great deal and decided nothing, and what remains is a heavy sort of helplessness. That helplessness is not a side effect. It is close to the product.

The test I find useful is simple. Does this picture of things going wrong tell me what to do tomorrow morning? If it does, it has earned its place, however frightening it is. If it does not, it is only weight, and it spreads from one tired person to the next.

Imagining the worst is a tool, and like most tools it is only worth holding while it is doing work. When it stops moving you, put it down and turn back to the thing in front of you that you can actually make better.