The Tyranny of “What If”

I spend so much of my time thinking. Thinking turns into planning. Planning turns into “what if.”

What if the car doesn’t start tomorrow?
What if my boss hated the email I sent?
What if my spouse is carrying some unspoken disappointment?

It never ends. The “what ifs” sprout like mushrooms after rain—sudden, endless, impossible to yank fast enough. Before I know it, I’m not in my life anymore; I’m just rehearsing all the ways it could collapse.

And the joke is, those disasters almost never show up. Not the way I picture them. I burn energy on futures that never arrive.

But anxiety always insists it’s helping. It calls itself preparedness, responsibility, foresight. It tells me that if I can just imagine every possible failure, I’ll somehow be protected from pain.

That’s the illusion: control masquerading as care.
Anxiety dresses up like a bodyguard, but it’s really just a nervous stagehand yanking the curtain open before the play is ready.

My “what ifs” have a particular flavor—quiet panic disguised as competence. Someone else’s anxiety might make them hoard, or scroll, or over-apologize. Mine makes me plan five moves ahead, just in case the world forgets how to love me unless I stay indispensable.

The cost? Missing what’s right in front of me. The baseball game I paid to watch but can’t follow. The dinner conversation I half-hear. The quiet moment I bulldoze past because I’m already solving problems that don’t exist.

The present keeps slipping while I run dry runs of a play no one’s performing.

So here’s the new rule: drop the script. Step onstage. Feel the lights, hear the crowd, and let the scene unfold without rehearsal.

Maybe the real preparedness isn’t planning for disaster—it’s trusting that I can improvise. 💙