“Do Something Every Day That Scares You” maxim

The “Do Something Every Day That Scares You” maxim is advice Elizabeth gives Brett in a letter, turning fear into a prompt for action. It links a frightening failure to the possibility of courage, but Brett’s responses show that understanding the advice and being ready to follow it are not the same thing.

The Maxim in Elizabeth’s Letter

Elizabeth invokes Eleanor Roosevelt’s line, “Do something every day that scares you.” She urges Brett to keep taking risks and to see where they lead, presenting such risks as part of what makes life worthwhile. The advice follows Elizabeth’s recognition that Brett had been fully alive during a performance, even though her passion arose from fear and anxiety. Rather than treating that fear as proof of weakness, Elizabeth reads it as evidence of Brett’s spunk, fortitude, and bravery.

The letter makes the maxim personal as well as general. Elizabeth tells Brett that courage already belongs to her, and that she should draw on it when she feels afraid. The instruction is therefore not simply to seek frightening experiences: it is a mother’s assurance that Brett has the capacity to face them.

Repeated Advice, Unresolved Fear

After rereading the letter, Brett considers Andrew, the teaching job, and Carrie as frightening matters she may need to face. Yet she identifies something still more terrifying and pushes it out of her thoughts. Although she has failed at the performance and lived through it, she says she is not ready to repeat the experience. The maxim’s first effect is thus not immediate transformation; it gives Brett language for courage while leaving her hesitation intact.

The advice returns when Brett reaches the gate at Saint Boniface Cemetery. Her hands tremble as she opens the letter and reads Elizabeth’s urging again, then she puts it in her pocket and enters. The gesture marks a small but concrete response: fear remains, but Brett proceeds through the gate rather than turning away. The cemetery also brings the maxim into the space of her memories of her mother and father. Seven years earlier, Brett had watched Elizabeth silently tend her father’s headstone and had been embarrassed by her mother’s continuing devotion to the husband who had left her. Now the remembered letter accompanies Brett back to the cemetery, lending the advice an intimate family context rather than leaving it as a general slogan.

Courage and the Pressure to Act

The maxim’s meaning is sharpened by Brett’s self-doubt in her relationship with Andrew. He insists that she is becoming the woman he and Elizabeth always believed she could be, while Brett cannot tell him the truth and feels a pit in her stomach. Andrew’s confidence in her contrasts with her private uncertainty; shortly afterward, he asks her to consider bringing him into Bohlinger Cosmetics, and she is unsure whether that is a good idea. These moments do not show Brett simply applying the maxim to resolve her choices. Instead, they place Elizabeth’s call to risk-taking beside the uneasy gap between other people’s expectations for Brett and her own readiness to act. Across the letter and its later recollection, the maxim remains both an inheritance of maternal faith and a demanding standard Brett is still struggling to meet.