Fear
You might think the opposite of love is hate, but it isn’t. The opposite of love is fear. Hate is a manifestation of fear.
I used to think that somehow love would push fear out of my heart, but that never happened. I never was able to conjure up love like that. No such thing as love on demand. Maybe me and everybody else is just too twisted…
But lately I’ve had a different thought. What if we just cling too tightly to fear? Maybe if we let go of fear, love takes its place? I can’t just manufacture love, but I can control my response to fear.
“Letting go” doesn’t seem the same as “casting out”. But I have seen that it is difficult to love if I am afraid. Think it’s easy? Try letting go of your fears – you’ll find out what scary is pretty quick.
Fear protects us. Without fear, we become reckless – our actions endanger us and the people around us. But cling too tightly to fear, and we become paralyzed, afraid to leave the house. Where is the line between “good fear” and “bad fear”? How much fear is too much?
Maybe it’s just a language issue. English lumps the emotions that breed caution and terror into the same word – fear. The Greeks had three words for love, maybe we just need different words to distinguish the range of emotions we lump into the word ‘fear’.
Parents love their children, but this bond seems to generate a huge amount of fear. Children benefit from parents’ fear for children’s well-being, but this fear unrestrained becomes suffocating and debilitating. And every parent will tell you letting go of this fear is hard. Really hard. Parents will always worry about their children – that’s the deal they made when they became parents. So this fear is born from love, not cast out by it. Where does fear “cross the line” from sustaining to debilitating? When does good fear turn into bad fear?
Maybe it’s like The Force - there’s a Dark Side to it.
Revisiting John: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment.”
So the “fear” John is talking about is the kind that has torment. When concern and caution give way to torment, you’ve found the Dark Side. It’s like striking a balance between bleach gargling and pole licking … ☺
I used to think my main responsibility towards myself was to constantly try to understand what I truly want, and not get distracted by false desires. But knowing what you want is useless unless you are willing to let go of the fears stopping you from following the path your heart reveals.
And sometimes you can’t know what you want until you move on from where you are.
“But one creature said at last, ‘I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging I shall die of boredom.“ – Richard Bach, Illusions