Fear and Love; those really are the only two choices in everything we do or say. It may seem like there are other choices, but really it all boils down to this: fear is like a loud drunk at a party, not particularly interesting but not able to be ignored, whereas love is much quieter and likely elected to not attend the party at all, love sits at home in a cozy room waiting for you to dedicate the time and effort to look for it. Fear drives, love waits.
What I think we miss as human beings is that both are always operable in our lives, all the time. Like two road diverging, except that no matter how many times you choose love over fear, fear will always find a way to crease love’s trajectory and insert itself. So it is about practice, over and over practice, choosing love over fear, minute by minute, hour by hour, day after day.
Fear masquerades as truth so often that we lose sight of what is real and what is imagined. Fear whispers in our ear, holds us close and feigns concern. Love at times feels distant and aloof, unattainable, out of reach. But it is never far and always accessible, but love will never lie or boast or brag, love will wait until we spin ourselves dry in fear's endless cycle like bricks in a dryer.
So how do we make a choice to choose love more often? For me, it starts with an awareness that I have a choice, that I will always have the choice between the two. In everything I do and say, I can move towards more fear, or more love. I didn’t know that this was my choice in everything. I thought it was about other things: success, sex, the accumulation of things. But love and fear live in those things too. Everything in life is always first a choice between loving or fearing then it becomes something else.
Each of these have different vibrational pulls. Fear seems stronger, unavoidable sometimes, but fear vibrates at a low frequency, and while it seems more accessible it requires that I reach lower than myself to join that vibrational energy. Love’s vibrational level is higher and may at times seem like more work. Harder to get to and maintain. But unlike fear which easily pulls us down and refuses to let go, all we have to do for love, is move in toward it, and we are enveloped in and up. Changing our inherent nature with intention and a willingness to ignore fear’s gravity and move instead towards love’s lightness.
Making coffee we have the choice. Driving to work we have the choice. Engaging with others - choice exists. In all that we do and are, we are presented day after day, the opportunity to leave behind fear’s ugly grasp and move towards the light and love even when there is no assurance of it being returned. Love gives off its own atmosphere. One that doesn’t assure us that all will be well and go the way we like, love instead tells us that if we continue to choose love over fear that eventually over time, we will be presented with less fear ridden options and will be able to walk the path of love far more often. Love never promises freedom from pain, or loss, or sadness because these are emotions that are attendants to life lived. They cannot be eradicated and the only reason that we believe they can is because we allowed fear to tell us that for so long, believing every word of fear’s tyrannical reign.
Today I begin the day with the intention to remember that in everything I do or say, I have a choice, choose love or choose fear. If I choose the later, often times, love seems to disappear as a choice, but no, that is just another story that fear tells me and I believe. Love is always a choice. And the more I select it, the better my life gets.
