Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three — all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.

Hale’s aphorism warns against the common habit of multiplying suffering by carrying it across time. The “one kind of trouble” is the difficulty actually present and actionable; the other two are retrospective rumination (“all they have had”) and anticipatory anxiety (“all they expect to have”). By framing these as separate burdens, the line suggests that much distress is self-generated through memory and imagination rather than imposed by circumstances. The practical implication is a discipline of attention: meet today’s problem directly, but refuse to rehearse past pain or pre-live future misfortune. The wit of “some people bear three” underscores how normalized this mental overloading can become.