History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy.

What has already happened tends to say a good deal about what will. People and institutions repeat themselves, not exactly, but closely enough that someone paying attention to the pattern is rarely astonished. The value is not in predicting events; it is in being less surprised, and therefore less easily panicked, when the familiar shape comes round again.

Take a situation that is worrying you and ask when you have seen its like before, in your own life or someone else’s. Write down what happened last time, and use it as a rough guide rather than a certainty.