From Expecting the Worst, to Learning Peace: Anxiety and Worry, Happiness, Near Death Experiences, and Christian Wisdom

Introduction: A Blow Dryer in the Crawl Space

The plumber crawled under my house with a blow dryer and fixed my frozen water line. The bill was $160.

That’s it.

No excavation. No catastrophic pipe replacement. No five-figure nightmare. Just a man in a crawl space, warm air on a frozen pipe, and water flowing again.

And yet, for days beforehand, I had already lived through the disaster.

I had not merely planned for the worst-case scenario. I had emotionally expected it, and inhabited it. I had rehearsed loss, helplessness, and financial strain in advance, as though doing so would somehow protect me.

This chapter is about that mistake—not as a personal quirk, but as a window into something much larger. Across psychology, near-death experience research, and Christian spirituality, the same insight appears again and again:

We suffer far more from imagined futures than from reality itself.

The problem is not prudence. The problem is anticipatory suffering—living tomorrow’s pain today, without tomorrow’s grace.

1. The Science of Happiness: Why We Misjudge the Future

Modern happiness research has identified a persistent flaw in human cognition known as affective forecasting error. Simply put, we are very bad at predicting how future events will affect our well-being.

We reliably:

Overestimate how bad negative events will feel
Underestimate our ability to adapt
Confuse worst-case possibilities with likely outcomes

This error is strongest in conscientious, intelligent, and responsible people—the very people most inclined to plan carefully. The mind attempts to gain control over uncertainty by simulating the future, but the simulation is biased toward threat.

The result is what might be called double suffering:

We suffer in advance through anxiety
Then we either suffer again when the event occurs—or realize the suffering was unnecessary

In my case, the catastrophic repair scenario was possible but not probable. Planning for it was rational. Emotionally expecting it was not.

Happiness research consistently shows that well-being depends less on external circumstances than on accurate perception. Peace grows when we relate to reality as it is, not as fear narrates it.

This is not a modern discovery.

2. The Desert Fathers: Anxiety as Imagined Suffering

Centuries before neuroscience, the Desert Fathers diagnosed anxiety with remarkable clarity.

Evagrius Ponticus taught that the mind is besieged by logismoi—distorting thoughts that pull us out of the present moment. Among the most destructive is fear of the future. These thoughts, he warned, do not describe reality; they replace it.

St. Anthony the Great observed that the soul is harmed less by what actually happens than by what it anticipates. Evil does not need to strike us directly if it can persuade us to live everywhere except where we are.

This was precisely my condition:

I was not dealing with a frozen pipe
I was dealing with an imagined future of financial collapse

St. Isaac the Syrian offers a devastatingly simple rule:

“Do not grieve before you are afflicted.”

This is not stoicism. It is spiritual realism. The Fathers did not oppose planning. They opposed pre-suffering—the quiet belief that anxiety is a form of wisdom.

3. Christianity: Responsibility Without Control

Christian spirituality makes a sharp distinction between responsibility and control.

Responsibility says:

Do what love and wisdom require today.

Control says:

Ensure nothing bad ever happens tomorrow.

The first is human. The second is impossible.

When Christ says, “Do not worry about tomorrow,” He is not dismissing prudence. He is naming an ontological truth: tomorrow does not exist yet, and therefore cannot be managed emotionally.

(Matthew 6:34 (NIV translation: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”)

Worry is not preparation. It is the attempt to live in a future where grace has not yet arrived.

At the heart of Christian theology is the claim that grace is given in the moment of need, not in advance. “My grace is sufficient for you,” God tells Paul—not preloaded, not stockpiled, but supplied.

When I emotionally expected catastrophe, I was implicitly assuming:

That I would face the outcome alone
That the future would arrive without accompaniment
That reality would exceed my capacity to meet it

Christian tradition calls this forgetfulness of providence.

4. Near-Death Experiences: Fear Belongs to Anticipation

Near-death experience research provides a striking confirmation of this insight from an entirely different direction.

Across cultures and belief systems, people who come close to death report something unexpected: fear is strongest before the event, not during it.

When the moment actually arrives, fear often dissolves into clarity, presence, or even peace. Many report that they felt more capable, more lucid, and more supported than they had ever imagined.

The recurring lesson is simple:

We are never given tomorrow’s strength today
We are given today’s strength when today arrives

Anxiety arises when the mind attempts to live future moments with present resources. Consciousness, however, seems structured so that the necessary capacity unfolds only when reality does.

This mirrors the Christian understanding of grace almost exactly.

5. A Healed Relationship to Time

What unites happiness science, NDE research, and Christian spirituality is not optimism, but right relationship to time.

Anxiety collapses the future into the present.
Faith allows the future to remain future.

To trust is not to deny suffering. It is to refuse to suffer twice.

The plumber with the blow dryer did more than fix a pipe. He exposed a pattern.

Most of what I fear never happens.
Most of what happens is manageable.
And when genuinely overwhelming events arrive, I am not abandoned to meet them alone.

Psychology calls this calibration.
NDE research calls it waking up.
Christianity calls it faith.

Conclusion: A Rule of Life

The invitation, then, is not recklessness, but restraint.

Plan concretely.
Prepare wisely.
But refuse anticipatory suffering.

A simple rule of life emerges:

I will not emotionally fund futures I have not yet been asked to live.

Peace is not found in controlling outcomes, but in trusting presence.

Grace arrives on time.
It always has.

From Expecting the Worst, to Learning Peace: Anxiety and Worry, Happiness, Near Death Experiences, and Christian Wisdom