'The Imaginary Nail a Man Down for a Sufferer'

We don’t expect profundity from youth; passion, yes, but not deep wisdom, the sort that more often takes a lifetime of learning and loss to acquire, if ever. But just as old men are often fools so can young men be prodigies of understanding. The obvious proof of this unlikely truth is John Keats. In his March 23, 1819 letter to Charles Brown, written seventeen months before his death at age twenty-five, Keats writes:

“Imaginary grievances have always been more my torment than real ones—You know this well—Real ones will never have any other effect upon me than to stimulate me to get out of or avoid them.”

A genuine grievance focuses our attention and rallies us to a solution. We take our medicine or cram for the test, but how do you fix a lifetime of laziness and lousy choices? Keats goes on:

“This is easily accounted for—Our imaginary woes are conjured up by our passions, and are fostered by passionate feeling: our real ones come of themselves, and are opposed by an abstract exertion of mind. Real grievances are displacers of passion. The imaginary nail a man down for a sufferer, as on a cross; the real spur him up into an agent.”

Keats suffered but seldom played the role of sufferer. About one point he was mistaken: “Real grievances are displacers of passion.” On the contrary, people are forever getting passionate about difficulties, especially when they wield no power over them. That accounts for most of human history.