“Fundamentally human beings are driven by one or two forces: love or fear,”
-Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General of The United States
There’s a simple choice with profound implications waiting just outside of awareness. It’s a choice that determines what kind of person you are and ultimately what kind of world we live in. It’s a choice we rarely think about – the choice between love and fear.
In these times the default choice is fear. We can get stuck in fear without realizing how it limits and restricts our capacity to see and think clearly.
Fear in modern life either propels us forward or gets us stuck in turmoil. It’s like swimming in a fast-moving stream. When the current grabs us the only option is to go with the flow. There’s no time to think about where it’s taking us or if that’s where we want to go. It takes all our energy to maintain control and avoid rocks, boulders, and other swimmers. Sometimes we get caught in a whirlpool where we go round and round and round without getting anywhere. Sometimes we can’t breathe and it feels like we’re drowning.
The stream of fear that grabs our attention and consumes our energy may be fast but it’s not deep. There is a choice. We can stand up, plant our feet on the bottom, bend our knees, and resist the flow long enough to take a look at what’s happening. This sounds simple but it’s not easy. The current is strong and other swimmers hinder our efforts. Sometimes it takes all our energy just to keep our head above water. We need to make a conscious choice to stand up and put our feet down again and again, over and over, until we can maintain balance against the pull of the current.
When we’re finally standing on our own two feet we can see where the turbulence is coming from and where it’s taking us. We realize that shore is not that far away and we can get there if we maintain balance and carefully move toward it one step at a time. If enough of us make it to shore, something profound and interesting will happen. The course and swiftness of the stream will change.
The power of the current that continually propells us forward is created by our own collective effort to keep pressing on. The people swimming ahead of us and around us create a flow that we intensify by trying to keep up and get ahead. Our own strokes and kicks produce the turbulence. Fear keeps us moving without asking where we’re going or why. It keeps us from seeing what’s happening and what we can do about it.
We’ve been led to believe that the stream of fear is reality – the way things are, the way they were meant to be. Getting our feet on solid ground allows us to realize that life has more to offer than learning to ride waves and navigate rapids shaped by man-made fear. Life has purpose, meaning, and direction. We have value, potential, and choices.
There’s one choice that’s more important than any other. If you pay attention, you’ll see how it’s weaves through almost every aspect of life. It affects how you act, what you do, and who you become.
It’s the choice between love and fear.
Who wouldn’t choose love over fear? We don’t see love as an option because fear narrows our focus on what we perceive to be immediate threats. Fear easily dominates our awareness. Pressure to keep up and fit in starts in first grade or before. Both mainstream and social media blanket us with information that elicits fear. Strands of fear are woven into our education, economic, and political systems. Mainstream entertainment incorporates fear to keep us stimulated and attached.
We’re in a fast-moving stream but we’re not helpless and we’re not alone. We have arms and legs that get stronger every time put our feet down and hold our position. We have a heart that deepens and expands each time we choose love. Once we learn to stand together, we will realize that there’s a force more powerful than gravity that can pull us out of rivers driven by fear toward a reality grounded in love.
It’s a simple choice complicated by a fear-filled world. Most fear in modern life is man-made and recycled but some is very real, at least in the short-term. There are consequences for choosing love. Fear of those consequences keeps us from realizing that it’s worth it.
There’s no greater fulfillment than to love and be loved. A man I’ll call Charlie was referred to me for counseling by his doctor after being told he had a terminal illness with, at best, a few months to live. Charlie was very wealthy. He had owned companies and dined with presidents. In our first session, Charlie sat down, looked at me and said, “My life has been shit.” He had been married three times and none of his children would talk to him. He had few friends and no interests. He realized he had lived his life in fear: fear of not having enough; fear of losing what he had; fear of not being able to “keep up;” fear of not being good enough, not being accepted, and not belonging. Charlie thought he was afraid of dying but realized he was afraid of emptiness. He only had a few months left but made a decision to let go of fear and choose love.
Charlie wrote letters of apology to people he had offended. He crafted heartfelt messages to his children and ex-wives with compassion and understanding for the hurt, anger, and frustration he had caused. He acknowledged his fears and shortcomings and learned patience, humility, and empathy. When Charlie could no longer make it to the clinic, I visited him at home and saw him a few days before he died. He was in pain but smiling and contented. Charlie had chosen love. He had learned to love, and eventually, was loved.
Mature love demands that we be fully and completely ourselves. Loving others without fear or attachment allows us to see them clearly – we see gifts and potential as well as limitations and barriers. We realize that everyone and everything has value and purpose. Mature love opens our eyes and hearts to the beauty and potential of all life with the realization that we’re an integral part of it.
Mature love is rare in a world driven and distorted by fear. We’re taught that love is something we need to find, make, or earn. Fear assigns attachment to love, turning it into something we might lose and never find again. Fear puts boundaries around love. It makes us try to hold onto it as if it were a possession. Fear turns love into a need for security and comfort. It becomes something we want to acquire and something that can be manipulated.
Modern life tells us that we will find love when we make a good impression, and achieve “success.” We’re told that we’ll be loved when we become attractive, rich, or popular. Simply being ourselves will never be enough according to messages we receive every day.
We tend to accept fear as inevitable. We see love as selective, fleeting, and impractical. If we take the time to understand fear and see how love works, we will learn that fear is not inevitable and love is both enduring and pragmatic. Fear is actually a rare occurrence in a life that’s healthy and fulfilling – and love is what makes it healthy and fulfilling. Love and fear take us in opposite directions and you can choose which way you want to go.
I’ve spent more than fifty years reflecting on what worked and what didn’t in my attempt to help the clients and students I was honored to serve live more healthy and fulfilling lives. Over time it became clear that the essence of my work was removing obstacles to love and the greatest impediment to love was fear. I began to recognize fear as a component in virtually every problem students and patients brought to me. Treatment involved restoring balance, getting their feet on the ground, understanding the nature of love and fear, and making decisions that allowed them to see themselves and others more clearly with more open hearts.
This book summarizes what I’ve learned over five decades of watching a few thousands of people choose love over fear. My hope and prayer is that you will see the value of making that choice in your life. The first two chapters focus on understanding the essentials of love and fear – what they are, how they work and how they affect us. The next chapters explore three questions that affect what we believe to be reality. Chapter Three, What we see, focuses on understanding perception by using a simple analogy from photography. Chapter Four, Who are we?, questions the wide-spread belief that human beings are naturally aggressive, self-centered, and competitive by summarizing the history of that thinking and it’s effects on how we live and relate. Chapter Five, Who am I?, introduces the notion of the authentic and constructed Self. The authentic self includes our unique gifts and potential along with our temperament and styles of thinking, learning and interacting. The constructed self is formed by how we adapt to our culture and experiences. Seeing how the constructed self can both restrict and enhance the authentic self allows us to make choices that free us to be fully comfortable with who we are at this point in time.
Chapter Six delves into what I believe is the most essential human need – belonging. It introduces the concept of Conditional Belonging, which pushes us to try and fit in at the cost of our Authentic Self. Chapter Seven looks at three aspects of truth – heart, mind, and authenticity. It probes how allowing our minds to overpower our hearts restricts and diminishes who we are and what we can be.
Chapter Eight looks at love as a potential force in our lives, how we can access its power and integrate it into our routine. Chapter Nine identifies obstacles to love and how to avoid or work through them, and Chapters Ten through Twelve focus on understanding the process of learning to consistently choose love over fear.
Restoring Balance makes choosing love and everything else easier. The Appendix contains excerpts from my earlier book, “Balance: The Key To Physical, Mental, and Emotional Health and Effectiveness” that explain how to restore and maintain balance explains how to restore and maintain Balance. It also includes chapters from another book, “Understanding Fear and Fear Based Thinking” that describe how to deal with fear and Fear Based Thinking in self, others, and the larger culture.
We face a simple choice with profound implications. I appreciate you considering this choice by looking at and possibly reading this book, and sharing and discussing it with others. I look forward to hearing your thoughts, ideas and experiences about choosing love over fear. Please post them to my website: http://www.bringtruthtofear.org
Bring Truth to Fear 