Lincoln Collier Anxiety Challenge By Another Name Summary

Anxiety is one common emotion that everyone will face various times in his or her life. Too much anxiety will break one’s mind, yet anxiety within a limit certain amount also helps a person to advance. This topic was explored by a freelance writer, James Lincoln Collier, in his essay “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name”. In this article, James writes “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.” Personally, I did become more mature as I was facing an unescapable challenge few years ago. In addition, the feeling of anxiety companied me all the
In the summer of my sophomore year in high school, I was given an opportunity to travel in Europe, as a reward for my good school report. I was really excited because I had never traveled all alone before. At the same time, as a teenage boy, I was eager to prove my independence and considered this as the best opportunity to prove it. Thus, I accepted this opportunity without a second thought. However, things went wrong as soon as I arrived in Paris. I realized that I didn’t order the overseas service on my phone; thus, it had no Internet signal, and GPS couldn’t guide me to my hotel. At the same time, I knew nothing about the public transportation system in Paris. Therefore, I thought that I would get lost. Since I was traveling alone, there was nobody to guide me or lead me. I had only to depend on myself. I panicked and I felt sick. I was so nervous that I thought I was going to vomit even though I didn’t eat much on the plane. I sat on a chair and started to think what I should do. I had to find a way
All my fantastic illusions were broken. On the first day of my vocation, I was too busy finding my hotel and protecting myself that I didn’t have time to enjoy the view of this city. I had 30 more days like this ahead of me, and I wondered what I should do to get through those days. I was so anxious that I couldn’t go to sleep even though I was so tired after my sixteen hours of flight and my struggle all the way from the airport to the hotel. Auspiciously, at this time I got a message from my friend, who said that he thought what I was doing was really brave and he envied me having such an opportunity. Then I realized what I had already accomplished. I found my way from the airport to the hotel in an unfamiliar city where most people don’t speak English, without GPS or Internet. A few hours before I had thought that this was impossible. Those proved that I could go further. I realized that if I could do this, I could certainly solve any other problems during my trip. With this belief, I overcame my anxiety about other unknown problems that I would have to deal with in that month. I was ready to face more difficulties and to solve all of them. As I traveled further and further, I found that this anxiety faded away. James says in his essay that “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.” The same thing occurred