In a Good Heart About Life
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Continuing the little run of posts looking at some insights of Robert Louis Stevenson, here are some words of his, that, if taken seriously, could be a kind of antidote to fear.
It is a commonplace, that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we thought. I believe this is every one's experience: but an apprehension that they may belie themselves in the future prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wish sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had been some one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger; to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and how the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need.1
How much of ordinary life is based on fear. Worries, anxieties, phobias. We all have our own particular kind of fears, even the most seeming fearless. Anyone who asserts they have not, I would say falls into one of three categories, the first of which is by far the most common. Namely, 1.) that they are fooling themselves, 2.) that they are an invalid, or, finally, 3.) that they are one of those rare examples of someone who has learned how to transform their fears.
To be born without being able to be afraid, however, would seem a terrible incapacity, because fear is important. But, most essential is my attitude towards it. Am I a slave of fear, or any other emotion that comes my way, or does fear work for me?
Can I put Stevenson's advice and assertions straightway to action? For example, what nagging worry might there be, that is preventing me from acting in the way I wish, that I should get closer to, to try myself? It means a temporary increase of anxiety and discomfort, and to bring forward, or even create, "the hour of need." Well, I dare that worry to do its worst . . . And maybe, in so doing, it will help me, and give me its energy to do with what I wish, rather than it being the cause of much waste of nervous energy.
Stevenson's words, "how the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid," are somewhat curious. First, what does he mean by "good," I wonder. Something courageous, it seems, and something in oneself that acts in accordance with one's highest aspirations, perhaps. But isn't that what is continually overlaid in the petty concerns and distractions of ordinary life? It is not immediately clear from the wording of his sentence, but he seems to mean that it is in the hour of need that "the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him." In that hour, or that moment, all that is unnecessary, and all that is not good, naturally disappears, as long as one is true to one's real need.
R.L. Stevenson - An Inland Voyage, C. Kegan Paul & Co. (London), 1878, p.3-4.