Franklin isn't merely suggesting optimism—he's making a psychological observation about how worry actually *manufactures* trouble by consuming the mental energy you'd need to handle real problems if they arrived. Notice he doesn't say trouble won't come; he says don't anticipate it, a distinction that protects your present clarity rather than denying reality. When you catch yourself rehearsing a difficult conversation with your boss that may never happen, you've already lost the afternoon to phantom anxiety, leaving yourself depleted if an actual challenge appears. Keeping to the sunlight means treating your attention as the finite resource it truly is.