"...Scothania was no ordinary barbarian nation. Could the Long Night really be drawing nigh - in Flandry's sacrosanct lifetime?
"He shoved the thought aside. Time was lacking for worry. Let him also dismiss fret about the job from which he had been snatched. It would go to the staff, who could doubtless handle it, albeit not with the Flandry sytle. He had suddenly acquired a new task, whereof the first part was plain, old-fashioned survival." (pp. 249-250)
Time was lacking for worry! I agree that he should not fret about an interrupted job that will go to others but can anyone just decide not to worry about something important? Yes, if immediate survival becomes an even more urgent concern. It is good that Flandry sees survival as merely the first part of his new task. If survival became his only concern, then things would indeed be bad.
Individual mentalities differ. When I told a guy that, for me, meditation can involve agonized guilt for past actions, he commented, rightly, that that does not sound good but then his solution was just not to think about it! Good for him if he can decide just not to think about anything unpleasant but one kind of meditation involves just sitting with whatever comes up and at least some of us simply have no control over what "comes up."
Flandry's predicament is not so far from ours. He has his approaching "Long Night." We perceive comparable threats to a continued comfortable life-style. If I thought that one of those threats was about to be realized, then I would not be able to decide not to worry! All fiction is about life, even including futuristic sf and space opera.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I sure as heck don't think I would have been as mentally agile as Flandry! And I agree, he HAD to focus first on survival and then finding means of scotching the Scothans. There was absolutely nothing he could do about the job he had been snatched from. Flandry would just have to trust that his staff could handle it.
Ad astra! Sean
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