Time & Perspective Quote by Thomas Kempis

Anxiety about tomorrow layers pain on top of what is already hard today. The mind races ahead, imagines threats, rehearses loss, and in doing so manufactures sorrow before it arrives. The sentence works as a gentle rebuke and a clear diagnosis: worry does not avert trouble; it duplicates it. Prudence and preparation have their place, but anxiety is different. It is a restless attempt to control what cannot yet be handled, a refusal to let the present be enough. When fear solidifies into anticipation, we begin to suffer twice, once in imagination and once, perhaps, in reality.

Thomas Kempis speaks from a tradition that sees inner peace as a fruit of trust. As the author of The Imitation of Christ, he urges readers to hold loosely the world’s uncertainties and to anchor themselves in the providence of God. His line echoes the Gospel’s counsel not to be anxious about tomorrow, because each day has enough trouble of its own. For a 15th-century monk living amid plague, war, and social upheaval, the invitation was not escapism but a disciplined posture: do the duty of this hour, pray, keep humble, and entrust the rest. Worry is portrayed as a spiritual inefficiency, consuming energy that could be spent on obedience, charity, or patient endurance.

The insight also rings true psychologically. Anticipatory anxiety magnifies threats and narrows vision, leading to rumination that intensifies distress while solving little. By refusing to catastrophize the future, one reduces unnecessary sorrow and becomes freer to act wisely in the present. Kempis’s counsel is not to deny risk or abdicate responsibility. It is to relocate the center of gravity: meet today’s tasks with steadiness, take reasonable steps, and surrender the outcomes beyond your reach. When tomorrow finally arrives, it will bring what it brings, but you will not have paid the price twice.