Eliot cuts against the grain of motivational platitudes that pretend anxiety is merely an obstacle to overcome. His claim isn't that worry *helps* creativity—rather, that the two are structurally bound together, like servants in the same household. A musician preparing for her first public performance finds herself both terrified and unusually alive to detail, discovering phrasings she'd never noticed in months of private practice; the anxiety hasn't inspired the music, but it's sharpened her perception of it. What matters here is recognizing that expelling all nervousness might cost us something we actually need.