Are you operating from fear or love…?

Are you operating from fear or love…?

I was at Universal Studios yesterday, walking amidst a myriad of families, couples, friends excitedly buzzing from one ride to the next. As I sipped my coffee and waited for my friends on a nearby bench, I had unknowingly positioned myself between two couples having—seemingly—diametrically opposing experiences. One couple was arguing, rather heatedly, in one corner of the bench. The other couple was kissing, snuggling, making out in the opposite corner, as I sat, awkwardly, in the middle. I drank my coffee, gingerly, as I felt the rollercoaster of energetic polarity. 

Outwardly, the couples were expressing two radically different emotions: Fear and love. In fact, Neal Donald Walsh, in his book, Conversations with God, talks about how humans only operate from one of these emotions at a time. And as I turned to look at each couple beside me, then the rest of the park surrounding me, it seemed to be accurate at first glance. 

Tightly-wound, shouting parents expressed the fear of losing their children in a sea of strangers. Other’s fears of injury, spending too much money, not having enough time to ride all of the rides, erupted from them in aggressive tones and behavior, falling like shrapnel around me as I sat. 

Conversely, there was love for Disney, the film industry, and each plushy character beaming from droves of ecstatic fans skipping, jumping, running around me. There was love and appreciation between parents, children, partners, and familial generations, that bloomed, sweetly, with laughter and wonder before my eyes. 

Superficially, each seemed to be operating from either fear or love. However, as I sat on the bench betwixt the very embodiment of each, I couldn’t help but feel into a deeper level of truth. We could not have fear with out having profound love first. For, it is only in the fear of losing the feeling of love, that we fight, take flight or freeze. As I listened to the couple fighting near me, their words faded away, and the subtext grew louder. Instead of the boyfriend yelling, “why don’t you hold my hand when we’re walking around the park?” The subtext began to sound more like, “why don’t you want everyone to know that we are together??” And deeper yet, “am I lovable, worthy of love and devotion if my girlfriend doesn’t want others to know that we are a couple???” 

Every fear has the desire for profound love at its gestational core.

We are loving, expressive beings searching for connection. And when we remember that the place at which we are all one—our shared humanness—begins with love at its core, we can truly communicate, soothe, transcend and heal whatever fear may emerge. 

Next time you catch yourself operating from fear, dive a bit deeper, search for the love at its root, and start there, for, it is the basis of all connection, experience, relationship and growth.