Diametrically Opposed

Note: I’ve discovered the hard way that you have to be careful with titles on the internet. For a while there, people interested in off-the-wall physical expressions of endearment were visiting my site (and I assume getting very disappointed) from Russia and the Middle East. So, if my titles seem unrelated to the content of the blog entry, that would be why.

Recently, someone told me love and fear are the only two emotions. Bear with me and go with that for a minute.

If love and fear are the only two emotions, that makes them akin to good/evil, dark/light and hot/cold – in other words diametrically opposed. It also makes love and fear elemental and ever present in each other. Ergo, we are constantly balancing these two forces within ourselves.

This information came to me right when I was contemplating,
“how do I love without fear?”

Which morphed into, “how do I love in spite of fear?”

Which took me to, “how can I love while in fear?” This is an acknowledgement that once we love, we fear losing the object of our love.

We talk a lot about unconditional love as the purest form of love, but I’m not sure humans are capable of no expectations. Think about times you’ve thought, “If you loved me, you would…” It is also possible that even when we love unconditionally, the objects of our love do not know our love is boundless. I think about the way we condition our children through expectations. We expect them to get good marks, we expect them to do chores and we expect them to conform to social mores.

So do they feel unconditionally loved?

Well, mine should! (just in case they read this)

If love and fear are elemental, diametrically opposed emotions, then our lives are a constant balancing of these emotions in all our relationships with everyone and everything.

I think of love as divine. It radiates warmth and light. Love is a soft blanket, a soothing breeze and a crackling fire.

 

Fear is your innards dropping to your feet; it is the ice that fills your veins freezing you into inaction and the thump in your chest that focuses your mind on one specific thing – what was that noise?

If love and fear exist on a sliding scale, then somewhere around the middle is thrill! This idea helps me to understand why at the root of many of my challenges I find fear.

It means that fear can be a little tickling voice holding you back or turning you away from things without even showing itself. It may mean that when we don’t love something it is because we fear it more. That certainly explains how I feel about cliff climbing or jumping from an airplane.

So I’ve begun pondering Fearless Love as an ideal. It is love that acknowledges fear, but does not allow it to diminish the love. From now on, I will try to love fearlessly – this includes love of life; which I suspect will be the hardest to love fearlessly.

When an opportunity presents itself to you, decide to love it fearlessly.