Of mountains, molehills, and water glasses: learning to control runaway thoughts

Pablo J. Davis

Enlace para espanol/Link here for Spanish

Like a seed lying dormant in the ground, that germinates and finally penetrates through the soil, a parent’s words and lessons can take years, even decades, for the child—now a grown woman or man—to consciously remember, to grasp their meaning and apply them to living.

“Nothing is eaten as hot as it’s cooked”: a father’s distant words remembered, his version of a French saying learned in post-World War II Europe: Rien ne se mange aussi chaud comme il est cuit. An unexpected vision of my father at age 20—a photograph of him in his Army uniform, young and happy, received from my cousin yesterday, on Veteran’s Day—somehow led me to that long-ago saying of his.

(The poet Samuel Hazo’s unforgettable verses from “The Torch of Blood” echo in the mind’s ear: “Before or after Abraham,/what is the resurrection and the life/except a father’s word/remembered in his son?”)

“Nothing is eaten as hot…”: he would say it when his son was worried the night before a difficult test, or over a bigger classmate’s challenge to a fistfight, or being in trouble with a teacher. What we dread, he was saying in his way, is almost never as terrible as we imagine.

“Hold on a minute, thought! Let me see who you are, what you are about. Let me examine you….” The words of the philosopher Epictetus help us calm our anxieties and control runaway thoughts. Photograph ©2021, Pablo J. Davis. All rights reserved.

English has no close equivalent. True, there’s “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill”—the “molehill” some unpleasant incident, the “mountain” an overly angry or dramatic reaction. The phrase looks back at what has happened, though it could probably also apply, like Rien ne se mange, to the anticipation of pain.

The phrase “to talk someone down” may refer to that “mountain” of overreaction.

Sp. No te ahogues en un vaso de agua, literally “Don’t drown in a glass of water” is likewise about proportionality. The very ridiculousness of the image makes for a vividly effective mind-picture of (and caution against) overreaction.

Our fears are not ridiculous, though. The precious human faculty of imagination is not only creative and inspiring—it also has the  power to terrify us. Two thousand years ago, that unparalleled teacher, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, urged his disciples to learn to calm fear and control runaway thoughts: “Don’t let the intensity of your thoughts sweep you away. Instead, say: ‘Hold on a minute, thought! Let me see who you are, what you are about. Let me examine you and put you to the test.’” (Discourses II.18.24–25). Rien ne se mange….

A version of this essay is scheduled for publication in La Prensa Latina https://www.laprensalatina.com on November 21, 2021.