Do not swallow life whole. A therapy of anxiety by fragmentation: do not let "the impression of the whole life" (TERMἡ τοῦ ὅλου βίου φαντασία) throw you, do not "think round" (συμπερινόει) all the possible hardships at once — their imagined mass is the very source of panic. Instead, EXERCISE"at each present thing ask yourself": "what is unbearable in this task?" (τί τὸ ἀφόρητον;). The answer is almost always nothing: "you will be ashamed to confess it" (αἰσχυνθήσῃ ὁμολογῆσαι), for what is unbearable is not the thing but its swollen shadow.

The weight is only in the present. The second move localises in time: "neither the future nor the past weighs on you (βαρεῖ), but TERMalways the present (ἀεὶ τὸ παρόν)." The future has not yet come, the past is gone — only the present instant is real, and it "is made small" (κατασμικρύνεται) if you "circumscribe it alone" (αὐτὸ μόνον περιορίσῃς) and convict the mind, should it fail to stand against so slight a thing (πρὸς τοῦτο ψιλόν). Cutting time down to the point of "now" strips suffering of its bulk (cf. 7.29 — περίγραψον τὸ ἐνεστώς, "circumscribe the present"; 12.26). The strict terms by the word are φαντασία, τὸ παρόν. The governing discipline is assent (not to inflate the impression, to circumscribe the present), the sustaining one desire (not to fear imagined hardships).