Anxiety-Challenge by another name

Between my sophomore and junior year at college，a chance came

up for me to spend the summer vacation working on a ranch in

Argentina. My roommate’s father was in the cattle business,

and he wanted Ted to see something of it. Ted said he would go

if he could take a friend, and he chose me. The idea of

spending two months on the fabled Argentina pampas was

exciting. Then I began have second thoughts. I had never been

very far from England, and I had been homesick my first few

weeks at college. What would it be like in a strange country?

What about the language? And besides, I had promised to teach

my younger brother to sail that summer. The more I thought

about it, the more the prospect daunted me. I began waking up

nights in sweat.

In the end, I turn down the proposition. As soon as Ted asked

somebody else to go, I began kicking myself. A couple of weeks

later I went home to my old summer job, unpacking cartons at

the local supermarket, feeling very low. I had turn down

something I wanted to do because I was scared, and had ended

up feeling depressed. I stayed that way for a long time. And

it didn’t help when I went back college in the fall to

discover that Ted and his friend had had a terrific time.

In the long run that unhappy summer taught me a valuable

lesson out of which I developed a rule for myself: do what

makes you anxious; don’t do what makes you depressed.

I am not, of cause, talking about severe states of anxious,

which require medical attention. What I mean is that kind of

anxiety we call state fright, butterflies in the stomach, a

case of nerves- the feelings we have at a job interview, when

we are giving a big party, when we have to make an important

presentation at the office. And the kind of depression I am

referring to is that downhearted feeling of blues, when we

don’t seem to be interested in anything, when we can’t going

and seem to have no energy.

I was confronted by this sort of situation toward the end of

my senior year. As graduation approached, I began to think

about taking a crack at making my living as a writer. But one

of my professors was urging me to apply to graduate school and

aim at a teaching career. I wavered. The idea of trying to

live by writing was a lot more scary than spending a summer on

the pampas, I thought. Back and forth I went, making my

decision, unmaking it. Suddenly, I realized that every time I

give up the idea of writing, that sinking feeling went through

me; it gave me the blues.

The thought of graduate school wasn’t what depressed me. It

was giving up on what deep in my gut I really wanted to do.

Right then I learned another lesson. To avoid that kind of

depression meant, inevitably, having to endure a certain

amount of worry and concern.

The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard believe that

anxiety always arisen when we confront the possibility of our

own development. It seems to be a rule of life that you can’t

advance without getting that old, familiar, jittery feeling.

Even as children we discover this when we try to expand

ourselves by, say, learning to ride a bike or going out for

the school play. Later in life we get butterflies when think

about having that first child, or uprooting the family from

the old hometown to find a better opportunity halfway across

the country. Any time, it seems, that we set out aggressively

to get something we want, we meet up with anxiety. And it’s

going to be our traveling companion, at least part of the way,

into any new venture.

When I first began writing magazine articles, I was

frequently required to interview big names-people like Richard

Burton, Joan Rivers, sex authority Williams Master, baseball-great Dizzy Dean. Before each interview I would get

butterflies and my hands would shake.

At the time, I was doing some writing about music. And one

person I particularly admired was the great composer Duke

Ellington. On state and on television, he seemed the very

model of confident, sophisticated man of the world. Then I

learned that Ellington still get state fright. If the highly

honored Duke Ellington, who had appeared on the bandstand some

10,000 times over 30 years, had anxiety attacks, who was I to

think I could avoid them? I went on doing those frightening

interviews, and one day, as I was getting onto a plane for

Washington to interview columnist Joseph Alsop, I suddenly

realized to my astonishment that I was looking forward to the

meeting. What had happened to these butterflies?

Well, in truth, they were still there, but there were fewer

of them. I had benefited, I discovered, from a process

psychologists call “extinction”. If you put an individual in

an anxiety-provoking situation often enough, he will

eventually to learn that there isn’t anything to be worried

about.

Which brings us to a corollary to my basic rule: you’ll

never eliminate anxiety by avoiding the things that caused it.

I remember how my son Jeff was when I first began to teach him

to swim at the lake cottage where we spend our summer

vacations. He resisted, and when I got him into the water he

sank and sputtered and wanted to quit. But I was insistent.

And by summer’s end he was splashing around like a puppy. He

had “extinguished” his anxiety the only way he could-by

confronting it. The problem, of cause, is that it is one thing

to urge somebody else to take on those anxiety-producing

challenges; it is quite another to get ourselves to do it.

Some years ago I was offered a writing assignment that

would require three months of travel through Europe. I had

been abroad a couple of times on the usual “If it’s Tuesday

this must be Belgium” trips, but I hardly could claim to know

my way around the continent. Moreover, my knowledge of foreign

language was limited to a little college French. I hesitated.

How would I, unable to speak the language, totally unfamiliar

with local geography or transportation system, set up

interviews and do research? It seemed impossible and with

considerable regret I sat down to write a letter begging off.

Halfway through, a thought-which I subsequently made into my

corollary to my basic rule-ran through my mind: you can’t

learn if you don’t try. So I accepted the assignment.

There were some bad moments. But by the time I had finished

the trip I was an experienced traveler. And ever since, I have

never hesitated to head for even the most exotic of place,

without guides or even advanced bookings, confident that

somehow I will manage.

The point is that the new, the different, is almost by

definition scary. But each time you try something, you learn,

and as the learning piles up, the world opens to you.

I’ve made parachute jumps, learned to ski at 40, flown up

the Rhine in a balloon. And I know I’m going to go on doing

such things. It’s not because I am braver or more daring than

others. I’m not. But I don’t let the butterflies stop me from

doing what I want. Accept anxiety as another name for

challenge and you can accomplish wonders.