Words That Flame From “The Tender Bar”
Here are a few lines that I highlighted in J.R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar either because they speak to me or because the writing is so very good:
Life is all a matter of choosing which voices to tune in and which to tune out…
Grandma was always afraid of something. She set aside time each day for dread. She was quite specific about the various tragedies stalking her. She feared pneumonia, muggers, riptides, meteors, drunk drivers, serial killers, tornadoes, doctors, unscrupulous grocery clerks, and the Russians…I pitied Grandma, and rolled my eyes at her, and yet when we spent time together I found myself dreading right along with her.
Every book is a miracle…Every book represents a moment when someone sat quietly–and that quiet part is part of the miracle, make no mistake–and tried to tell the rest of us a story.
Think about fear, decide right now how you’re going to deal with fear, because fear is going to be the great issue of your life, I promise you. Fear will be the fuel for all your success, and the root cause of all your failures, and the underlying dilemma in every story you tell yourself about yourself. And the only chance you’ll have against fear? Follow it. Steer by it. Don’t think of fear as the villain. Think of fear as your guide, your pathfinder…
I was the ideal candidate for writer’s block. All the classic defects converged in me–inexperience, impatience, perfectionism, confusion, fear…when I wrote something wrong I always took it to mean that something was wrong with me, and when something was wrong with me I lost my nerve, my focus, and my will.
The first step in learning, I decided, was unlearning, casting off old habits and assumptions.
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“Think of fear as your guide, your pathfinder…”
These words resonate in me. I was one of those who were truly fearless. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, of strangers, of adventures… Then, I had an experience which tunred my world upside down. Not in a good way. It also gave birth to some fears. These fears, in their turn, taught me the value of courage. Courage which I took for granted for all these years. My fears gave me a sense of discretion, a discernment that I lacked earlier.
Geetali,
It is one of life’s great lessons: the so-called “negative” emotions–fear, frustration, anger, loneliness, shame–can all be teachers when we let them in and look at them closely.
Congratulations on recognizing the “courage which I took for granted.”