Where No Fear Was eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 166 pages of information about Where No Fear Was.

Where No Fear Was eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 166 pages of information about Where No Fear Was.

I therefore believe that fears are like those little fugitive gliding things that seem to dart across the field of the eye when it is weak and ailing, vague clusters and tangles and spidery webs, that float and fly, and can never be fixed and truly seen; and that they are best treated as we learn to treat common ailments, by not concerning ourselves very much about them, by enduring and evading them and distracting the mind, and not by facing them, because they will not be faced; nor can they be dispelled by reason, because they are not in the plane of reason at all, but phantoms gathered by the sick imagination, distorted out of their proper shape, evil nightmares, the horror of which is gone with the dawn.  They are the shadows of our childishness, and they show that we have a long journey before us; and they gain their strength from the fact that we gather them together out of the future like the bundle of sticks in the fable, when we shall have the strength to snap them singly as they come.

The real way to fight them is to get together a treasure of interests and hopes and beautiful visions and emotions, and above all to have some definite work which lies apart from our daily work, to which we can turn gladly in empty hours; because fears are born of inaction and idleness, and melt insensibly away in the warmth of labour and duty.

Nothing can really hurt us except our own despair.  But the problem which is difficult is how to practise a real fulness of life, and yet to keep a certain detachment, how to realise that what we do is small and petty enough, but that the greatness lies in our energy and briskness of action; we should try to be interested in life as we are interested in a game, not believing too much in the importance of it, but yet intensely concerned at the moment in playing it as well and skilfully as possible.  The happiest people of all are those who can shift their interest rapidly from point to point, and throw themselves into the act of the moment, whatever it may be.  Of course this is largely at first a matter of temperament, but temperament is not unalterable; and self-discipline working along the lines of habit has a great attractiveness, the moment we feel that life is beginning to shape itself upon real lines.

XVI

FEAR OF LIFE

Let us divide our fears up into definite divisions, and see how it is best to deal with them.  Lowest and worst of all is the shapeless and bodiless fear, which is a real disease of brain and nerves.  I know no more poignant description of this than in the strange book Lavengro: 

“‘What ails you, my child,’ said a mother to her son, as he lay on a couch under the influence of the dreadful one; ’what ails you? you seem afraid!’

“Boy.  And so I am; a dreadful fear is upon me.

“Mother.  But of what? there is no one can harm you; of what are you apprehensive?

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Where No Fear Was from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.