Love >Fear
Choose love not fear.
In 1998 I climbed into a bubble bath with a book, A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson. Page after page and line after line I read, “Choose love over fear.” Lovely words, they felt so good but what did they mean? I don’t think that unicorns, rainbows and fluffy kittens is what Marianne was referring to.
Choose love not fear.
A million times since then I have heard these words in lectures and on podcasts, I have read them in books and articles. Intellectually they make so much sense and they seem so simple. Sure…when faced with a choice, act from a place of love not fear. I put the reminder on my phone, posted the quote on Instagram, worked toward responding not reacting. But it was not until very recently in the midst of wading through my own childhood debris and simultaneously leading 3 adolescents through teenagedom did it really start to occur to me. I don’t really know what that means. Did I slide backwards? Why can’t I wrap my head around the concept? Or has the meaning gained some depth for me and required some more thought? What the heck does that mean? How do I do it?
Ok, let’s start here, Gabby Bernstein, Eckhart Tolle even Dr. Phil and countless other spiritual teachers have dished it to us in various ways to choose love over fear. Both feelings cannot exist simultaneously. To choose faith over doubt, to choose acceptance of the path before us with a balanced degree of intention and surrender. Ok cool…what? How? I mean it’s a lovely sentiment, but it’s a bit like, “eat right, and exercise.” Vague at best, trite at least. And am I the only one that doesn’t get it? (back to this theme) What am I missing that everyone else can see?
Let’s break this down. Choose love of whom? A person, a planet, our families? Choose love of calm over chaos? Choose almond milk over chocolate? Who knows. Does choosing love over fear mean being brazen in our careers, charging ahead and making things happen come hell or high water? Does it mean forgoing our intuition and thoughts and jumping head first into romantic relationship? Does it mean bending ourselves into pretzel shapes of time to ensure our children’s happiness? Does it mean ignoring, forgiving, accepting words and behaviors on social media or in the coffee shop or in our own living rooms that give us that sharp pain right in the center of our chests and throats? I mean, I don’t think so. Doesn’t feel like love.
Choose love not fear
Does it simply mean choose love and faith and hope that it will be enough? Well I’ll tell you what, I AM afraid. Faith has not always led me down the path to serene bliss and contentment. I know what it feels like to be hurt and to worry that you will be hurt again. I know what it feels like to put trust in someone to have your back and still be betrayed. I know the spiraling terrifying feeling of the slow surrender that is allowing our children to make their own mistakes and grow into their very own selves. So how can I choose love when I’m so afraid? I have seen it in my own life being both the giver and the recipient. But wait, how? How much control must we surrender? How deeply must we realize that we hardly have any control at all and in the grips of trying to control all the things we watch the beauty of moments drip out the sides of our clenched fists altering them forever and therefore losing them? I suppose I need to choose love so often, that the fear part fades more and more.
How do we choose love when what we are being served is a shit sandwich on burnt toast, or so it seems. People might not see us for who we are and so they judge. Others will not love us or even like us no matter how we twist and bend and platter up every single part of our personality and actions to meet what they have asked of us. How do we choose love when an uninsured driver in a possibly stolen car backs into us in a gas station, or our kid is thrown from a snowmobile and is now yet again physically broken, and another kid doesn’t get invited to the party everyone else is going to, and yet another is benched through the game and we are not heard for recognized for our ideas at work, and the heat is acting up again and staying at 62 degrees and its freezing outside and ….. wow. No wonder we are all in this swirling vortex or cortisol and adrenaline.
Listen, I am not a wimp. I’ve seen some things, I’ve endured some things. Some heavy, yucky down right abusive in some cases, things. And I’ve come out on the other side still optimistic (mostly) intact and still growing. So how do we choose love over fear in all of these moments? I myself have made some changes to move me in that direction because the truth is you have to be willing to give some things up to have what you really want. I gave up wine. I started meditating (not only when I was upset) regularly, every day. I became willing to look into the corners of my soul to help understand actions, to face shame, to accept my place and the moment that I landed in. Is that choosing love? Feels like sitting on porcupine quills or being dunked in ice cold water at times but maybe that’s the point. To look at something and to feel it so we don’t not remain stuck in the story that is our past. Sounds like that’s choosing love, but not syrupy hallmark love. It feels like real, gritty, solid dare I say, self love.
Choose love not fear.
A shift in perception from fear to love is a miracle. As I sit here and contemplate what choosing love means, I also feel optimistic that a miracle lies at the end of this road for me, really just questioning it feels like a miracle. I am reminded that I know what love is. I am a mom of 3. I was divorced when I had a five year old and two three year olds. I know love damn it and I know how to get through some murk because of that love. Runny noses, stomach bugs, burst pipes in the basement, missing pieces for a school project at 10pm, and waking up to no coffee. I know it is love that pushes me through all that. I can ultimately yell and rage and lament but I know that it’s love that gets me through and it’s that love that reminds me that I DO know what love is, so why the hell and I questioning how to choose it?
Choose love not fear.
It’s such great advice, right? So how to channel this love I know, into times when we’d rather rage or pout? In the moments when the person we are in a relationship with unintentionally makes a statement that hits you right in the gut of what your biggest shame is? How do we channel love when we are about to run our first marathon and the idea of failure or injury looms? Or in the pause after we have heard something we don’t like and it feels like an attack and our first reaction is to respond back with a statement reinforcing just how that other person hurt us as well, and harder? Is choosing love over fear in the moment when we take our feelings of inadequacy and waning worth and project a little story onto someone we love to help explain it away? I mean, is it survival? That sure is what it feels like when that little fear monsters comes up and the adrenaline coats the inside of our organs and we just want to let it all come out in words and flailing hands about how we are right and make everyone else understand? It’s healthy to questions accusations thrown at us, to want to protect our hearts, ourselves, our relationships, our children, our deepest wounds. It begs to question, where is the line? When our narrative and the way we have set up our own story is threatened, how do we choose love over fear?
Truth is, we don’t have to wait for a crisis or the point where our flight or fight has us in a state where we don’t know if we are coming or going. We can choose love by pausing, listening and realizing that age old truth, that it’s probably not personal. It’s often the other person’s perception of themselves just as much as our perception is how we view our own pain and story. We can choose to not attack, not criticize. To set our ego aside long enough to understand what the other person is experiencing, to recognize that maybe the perceived severity of the moment is not a black cloud following us around but just a moment, attached to a feeling and that both will pass.
We can shift our choice from having to be right, understood and protected to acknowledging, accepting and just having the confidence of knowing that this is just part of the journey. We are all walking each other home and figuring it all out as we go. My guess is this is what choosing love is. Acceptance of the moment, recognizing the other and their experiences, perspective on how it fits into the ultimate puzzle of our lives. This feels like freedom even as I write it.
Do I have all the answers? Dear God, no. I feel just thinking about and acknowledging my questions is barely scratching the surface on what my full and truly actualized self is evolving into. So flawed human that I am, I am going to continue to ponder these questions and try to choose love over fear and maybe even begin to understand what that means moment to moment. Ultimately love wins. It’s the way I hope to lean, more often than not even when fear creeps in. I want to feel more of the love even when I am afraid, and to more naturally choose love more often. I want to understand that sometimes love may not feel like a flower field, it may feel like a bed of nails but that it is still love. That feels like freedom to me . That understanding feels like freedom to me, that awareness feels like choosing love. Even as my finger hits publish on these ponderings I am choosing love over fear. I love you. I see you.
