1. Which sentence best expresses the central point of the entire selection? a. There are two kinds of anxiety: the normal anxiety that one feels when confronted with a new situation, and abnorma

James Lincoln Collier

1 Between my sophomore and junior years 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.

2 The idea of spending two months on the fabled Argentine Pampas* was exciting. Then I

began having second thoughts. I had never been very far from New England, and I had been

homesick my first 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 a sweat.

3 In the end I turned 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 turned 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 to college in the fall to discover that Ted and his friend had had a

terrific time.

4 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.

5 I am not, of course, talking about severe states of anxiety or depression, which require

medical attention. What I mean is that kind of anxiety we call stage fright, butterflies in the

stomach, a case of nerve the feelings we have at a job interview, when we're 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 the blues, when we don't seem to be interested in

anything, when we can't get going and seem to have no energy.

6 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.

7 I wavered. The idea of trying to live by writing was scar 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 gave up the idea of writing, that sinking

feeling went through me; it gave me the blues.

8 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.

*A vast plain in south-central South America.

9 The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard believed that anxiety always arises

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.

10 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 we 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.

11 When I first began writing magazine articles, I was frequently required to interview big

name people like Richard Burton, Joan Rivers, sex authority William Masters, baseball great

Dizzy Dean. Before each interview I would get butterflies and my hands would shake.

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

admired was the great composer Duke Ellington. On stage and on television, he seemed the very

model of the confident, sophisticated man of the world. Then I learned that Ellington still got

stage fright. If the highly honored Duke Ellington, who had appeared on the bandstand some ten

thousand times over thirty years, had anxiety attacks, who was Ito think I could avoid them?

13 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 those butterflies?

14 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 learn that there isn't anything to be worried

about.

15 Which brings us to a corollary to my basic rule: You'll never eliminate anxiety by

avoiding the things that cause it. I remember how my son Jeff was when I first began to teach

him to swim at the lake cottage where we spent 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 coul by confronting it.

16 The problem, of course, 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.

17 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 languages was limited to a little college French.

*Reference to a film comedy about a group of tourists who visited too many countries in too

little time.

18 I hesitated. How would I, unable to speak the language, totally unfamiliar with local

geography or transportation systems, 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

though which I subsequently made into another corollary to my basic rul ran through my

mind: You can't learn if you don't try. So I accepted the assignment.

19 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

places, without guides or even advance bookings, confident that somehow I will manage.

20 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.

21 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'm 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.