Is it useful to feel fear, because it prepares you for nasty events, or is it useless, because nasty events will occur whether you are frightened or not?

There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't.

Get scared later, and if you're scared now remember what Kit always said. If you're not scared, she told me, it's not bravery. And you want to be brave, don't you, Snicket?

...she was so afraid of everything that she made it impossible to really enjoy anything at all.

An Overall Feeling of Doom that One Cannot Ever Escape no Matter What One Does

It is very difficult to make one's way in this world without being wicked at one time or another, when the world's way is so wicked to being with.