In uncertain times, it’s easy to be scared. Events can escalate at any moment. You could lose your job. Then your house and your car. Something could happen with your kids. Of course, we’re going to feel something when things are shaky like that. How could we not?
Training. Courage. Discipline. Commitment. Calm. But mainly, that courage thing, which the Stoics held up as the most essential virtue.
One of my favorite explanations of this idea comes from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. “It’s not like astronauts are braver than other people,” he told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “We’re just, you know, meticulously prepared.” Think about John Glenn, whose heart rate climbed only to a modest 110 beats per minute as he was launched on America’s first orbital spaceflight. That’s what preparation does for you.
The important thing is that we are not afraid. That we don’t overthink things. That we don’t get distracted with the worst-case scenario on top of two other worst-case scenarios. Because that doesn’t help us with what’s right in front of us. It doesn’t help us put one foot in front of the other, whether it’s on a space walk or a tough business call. It doesn’t help us slow our heart rate down whether we’re reentering the Earth’s atmosphere or watching a plummeting stock market. It doesn’t help us remember that we’ve trained for this, that there is a playbook for how to proceed.
We can’t give in to fear. We have to keep going, like the thousands of generations who have come before us. We have to focus on the things that are in our control. We have to repeat to ourselves over and over again: The world is a narrow bridge, and the only way to move is forward.
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