Fear or Love?

[Halo Infinity]

I had so many threads in mind, but I thought of making this my last one for now before I really slow my roll.

If it really is true that all positive and negative thoughts and emotions boil down to fear and love at the core of them, I'd have to say that fear is still dictating and governing my life most if not all of the time. And as I enter middle age with regrets replaying in my mind occasionally, this particular question is hitting me harder than ever these days.

I noticed I'm usually with the least amount of fear, or no fear at all when I'm in my comfort zone and where everything is pretty much planned and controlled by myself. However, I still have to force myself to deal with fear as it's needed to just move on and live some type of productive and even normal day to day life.

I would also say that fear definitely motivates me more than comfort, convenience and even money itself. Pondering about the consequences and punishments of life, and simply how things could go wrong, have also kept me in line and made me think twice while just keeping it moving and me minding my own business and staying out of trouble.

The older I get, the more I realized that just about everything I do is out of fear. (Well, not literally everything, but at least everything regarding mental health and survival.) Without fear, I'd just give in to just about/almost all of my impulses/urges and not even think about it.

So as of now, is your life more on the side of fear or love?

As I haven't mentioned, it's been definitely more on the side of fear, but I still hope to reach a point to where I cross over to the love side of things.

-I didn't want to bump the thread, but it turns out...-

If you can even call this a positive, but in some ways it is: Fear of consequences and punishments have kept me in line and prevented me from getting into trouble/more trouble, so that kind of counts as a good thing.

[BRoswell]

So as of now, is your life more on the side of fear or love?

My life bounces back and forth between the two, but I personally feel that's how life should be. Fear can motivate you just as much as love can so long as you don't let it overwhelm you. I find that nine times out of ten, fear is irrational, so it helps to set limits for yourself in terms of how much control you give it.

[Erneuert]

Immediately thought of Bill Hicks’ speech about fear and love when I saw the thread title.

[katara]

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

[allegate]

[M1ke]

I understand what you're asking. When I was younger, I used to not do a lot of things out of fear. It was a big motivator for me, and I recognized a lot of negative consequences of listening to fear too much, and then in many ways I stopped listening to fear.

But now, choosing to ignore fear has lead to bad outcomes sometimes too. Fear isn't always bad. The difficulty comes in recognizing when it's a rational fear VS irrational fear. I can't always tell the difference in my own head.

It seems strange to me, to see a positive quote about Christianity here as well. Someone recently recommended to me that I read "The Shack". I'm not a Christian by any means, but I found the portray of God in the book to be really interesting, up until the ending anyways. There was a lot of good things in there that seemed helpful, and even related to that twitter thread you just posted.

[Sarah_Munn]

Been thinking a lot about this thread and trying to be honest about how I might answer the fear/love question.

I think the vast majority of my life has been governed by fear. I'm less concerned about authority and rule breaking, but I think most of my interactions with people are governed by fear, even here on this forum, it's that much of a reflex. I might want to contribute to a discussion but I won't.
So most of my experience of people has been difficult, from the earliest memories I have. I'm a square peg in a round hole. Whatever it is that is 'off' about me is almost sniffed out by others. Obviously this led to bullying throughout school, outsider at college and nursing school. So my self esteem is very low, I believe there is a fundamental problem with my core self and after years of rejection I became defensive, angry and fearful.
The ridiculous thing is I am fairly open hearted and so because I avoid unnecessary interaction irl, to avoid rejection and pain and beating myself up, it adds another layer of distress because I don't have enough contact. I have friends, both irl and online, many made through NIN social networks, a few from school, college and nursing who were not popular or outsiders, but they are all over the UK and the world, few local.
So, I try to connect with other people, despite having a spikey and difficult personality/being physically unappealing. I suppose I expect rejection, I expect name calling and humiliation, but I can't carry on like this for the rest of my life. I'm trying to change what I can and accept what I can't. I don't know that I've got to love, except with those I know very well, but I think I've got more hope.