In a time before your now comfortable scrolling moments in a heated room, a cosy café, a train or a bus filled with civilized individuals going about their business, far before the safe privacy of your car and well-lit offices in which we collaborate and the safe embraces of our loved ones there was a different time for our species. In fact it was not that far back and most of our history in the pre-civilization era, and well within it, was a violent mess in which only a few survived to see another day, hunt another hunt or pluck another berry. If the elements didn’t get you a predator or a maddened warrior from the nearby tribe wanting your water source did. If you survived all that and started feeling kind of cocky there would be a random disease or an infected cut and you’re gone, erased from the gene pool. End of story, the curtain falls.

The brain is very much oriented towards the continuation of this play and is not ready for the curtain. Its only job is to keep this body, a USB full of genetic data, alive. That’s the prime directive. Your happiness or satisfaction is optional (which is one of the reasons why you’re hard wired to remember the negative experiences better – because the warning of a negative experience might save your life next time and is much more valuable in bare survival than the positive emotions). Happiness chasing is a very new thing we’re doing as a species and it began as soon as all of our primary needs were met on a larger scale. But hundreds of thousands of years old brain didn’t get the memo that we’re relatively safe now and is still operating at the primal level, perceiving everyday tasks as our lions and tigers and bears. Arguments, difficult talks, an email, a failed investment, a bad comment on a social network… the brain makes no distinction between these dangers and a life threatening reptile. In addition to the wonderful things our brains allow as to do accomplish and feel, we’re the only species that needs to learn to be in the moment and that perceive all the timelines it can imagine as one and the same, being equally stressed about what has passed and what is to come as something happening right now. If a zebra is chased it goes into survival mode, is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol to help its body run away and survive. If it does manage as soon as the direct threat is gone it goes back to lazily chewing the grass. It doesn’t obsess about what it could have done differently, about what actions and decisions got her to that situation, about the possibility of another pending chase where she might not succeed. Stress of the possibility of becoming a carnivores dinner is a possibility, a part of life just as the blades of grass in her teeth are and the sun rising. But the thing is it doesn’t stay in an eternal stress mode because this is very expensive for the body’s energy. The more sustained intense stress we have, the worse all of our systems function making the bad outcome more likely and turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If another set of incisors glistens in the sun, it’ll run just as fast as the first time, it will not sit at the bank and woe her faith comparing herself with all the other zebras that are not being chased. To a zebra now is forever and there is no other time frame.

There might be a real time when fight, flight or freeze should be activated within us and rightly so. You might be able to not get hit by a moving machine by a peripheral glimpse of something coming towards you at high speed, to duck if a heavy hard object is flying towards you or to feel real visceral fear standing to close to the edge of a mountain or face to face with rattle snake or a mouth foaming wild animal. Having fear in these situations is awesome. Amygdala is so good at this fear response reaction that it bypasses the rest of the brain completely and gets a privileged access to the senses, receiving visual information in hundred milliseconds directly from the thalamus while you’re not even yet aware what it is you’re looking at, it hadn’t yet been processed. This speed comes at the expense of accuracy so a garden hose in the dark might be deciphered as a snake, but it has to do that because if you were to sit down and contemplate the implications of each and every imminent danger, you’d be long gone by now.

The thing is fear is not bad in itself, but if the fear response is sustained and permeates all we do then we have a problem. This long drawn out fear appears in form of anxiety, worry, obsessing, paralysis to make a choice, illness from the chemical burden constant worry brings… so do as the zebra does. Respond adequately when necessary; calm down when it is not necessary. Stop living in the past or the future and employ methods of mindful reorientation to the present moment to bring back joy of just being alive and awake. Some things from the past are fixable other are not. Fix them if you can, release them if it’s over, rewrite the story. Future may or may not happen by your worst case scenario predictions. Chances are that even if doesn’t go perfect it will be nowhere near what you’re imagining so you’re worrying about an illusion and at a time where you have no control over it. You can invest into the future now by your actions and decisions oriented to a long term benefit rather than just a current satiation of a need, and you should, but not a cost of missing every „today” in your life for a tomorrow which you’ll never be able to fully predict. The amount of variables is just too large for you to fathom.

Learn from the zebra – When it is time to run do it. Then relax and recuperate so you can live to run another day, to run for the privilege to have another chance to run. Enjoy the time in between. Just live and take all that comes as it comes, with no baggage. Day by day is enough. It’s all we can handle. It’s beautiful and challenging enough in itself. Do it the best you can, that’s enough. A well lived life is a series of well lived days.