This is what some people believe. When one cuts through whatever emotion one is feeling right now, it’s rooted in either love or fear.
I believe that the reason that we have come to this site is because we have let fear-based emotions rule our lives. Anger, hate, frustration, anxiety, sadness, shame, regret … these feelings are all fundamentally driven by fear. In my case, I’m angry at myself. I hate my work situation. I feel great shame in being a burden on so many people. I’m frustrated by my relationship. I regret not having the balls to be true to myself – this lack of self-determination has caused me to make all sorts of bad decisions to make others happy; from choosing to study something I’m not interested in, to following a career I’m not passionate about (and not very good at), right through to creating life that I really didn’t want to create.
So, what does love bring to the emotional table? I’m guessing that it brings happiness, contentment, bravery, tenacity, generosity, caring, nurturing, a sense of feeling worthwhile and many other positive feelings. I’ve had these feelings in the past, and I was able to sustain some of them for a while. However, this took a lot of work and a lot of energy to focus on love as my primary emotion. Sadly, the balance of power, which was generally owned by fear up until my early 20s when love finally managed to overpower that demon, has reverted back to its natural order. However, even when love was the driver, fear was still in the passenger seat, constantly trying to trip me up and undermine me … as evidenced in some of the poor decisions I’ve made that have acted as a form of sub-concious sabotage of myself.
I am naturally a very fearful person. An alcoholic father, A frightened and vulnerable mother, a tyrannical older sister and an upbringing in a poor neighbourhood full of simple folk that can only communicate in grunts and fist fighting pretty much gave fear free reign over my psyche for the first 20 years of my life. The love of a good woman helped me in my war on fear. However, she too was fighting her own war. I think what brought us together wasn’t so much love but fear: fear of our home lives, and fear that nobody else would want us. From this grew some sort of love, although I’m not sure if it’s love in the traditional sense.
Now that fear is back in town, it’s making up for lost time. I feel more frustrated, angry, sad, ashamed and regretful than at any point in my life. I feel as though everything I worked for is a lie, and I’m about to be exposed. If I didn’t have so much fear, and if I hadn’t tried my darnedest to just run as far as I could and as fast as I could, I would have built much stronger foundations for my life, and a much healthier and sustainable environment to cultivate ample love. Had I more love, my old fears wouldn’t have stood a chance in reclaiming me.
I have new fears, and – strangely enough – some new signs of love. However, those sprouts of love are being pulled out like noxious weeds, because fear owns me.
9 comments
Son… DO YOU SEE THIS? This is an Anger Prisoner. A textbook example. DO YOU SEE THE FEAR, PEOPLE? This boy is scared to death of the truth. Son, it breaks my heart to say this, but I believe you are a very troubled and confused young man. I believe you are searching for the answers in all the wrong places…
There are other things that need to be taken into account here. Like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can’t just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else
hey SE, from talking to people it seems like making other people happy really almost drives people to death. Since everyone would be traumatized by your death, could you possibly make some changes for your own happiness instead?
Hello,
How are you?
Hayes
@donnie: I am a hostage to my own fear. I also acknowledge that the whole concept of the entire spectrum of human emotion tracing back to just two big ones might seem a little simplistic. Where do you think anger comes from? I’m extremely fearful, and one of the ways this fear manifests is in a sense of anger; primarily directed at myself for not allowing myself to be me. I spent so much time and energy trying to suppress it. When I ran out of energy, the skeletons in my fear closet managed to break down the door, lunge and take me away with them. At the moment, love is standing back, looking on helplessly.
@lps: I suspect this is a common experience among most of us. Because we’re busy concerning ourselves with other people’s happiness through trying to either grow their love or counter their fear, we end up giving away so much love that it eventually gets to a point where fear, and all its associated sub-emotions, have the keys to our psychological castle and then refuse to give them back. I’m not sure if succumbing to my own fears and checking out would necessarily transfer the fear energy onto others; it may do, which is what concerns me. I know of several things that may allow love to start filtering into my life again, but in order to obtain this I need to negotiate with others to give them to me. If can’t even influence myself to give me some love, how can I be expected to ask the same of others?
The darkside? Anyway, there are more than two basic human emotions. Most of our problem is that we don’t feel them anymore. I’ll give you an example. I understand what greed and envy is, I know why people feel it because I felt it once. But that was when I was in my teens. So, when I always say I am going to return to my best, that’s so long ago, my optimum must not have lasted very long. When you are badly out of sorts screwing people over to get what you want is really impossible because you have no desire. Every year you live in hope that some lifestyle change or medication will make the difference but it doesn’t bring it back. I suppose its like taking caffeine when your tired. There no substitute for sleep except we can’t sleep anymore. It’s the creativity I miss and being manipulative is better than this. It’s been 10 years.
@Admiral: It’s possible that the reason that love and fear are deemed to be the only two emotions is because the rest of the emotional spectrum has been drowned out. However, it could be likened to a family tree – perhaps feelings like anger, greed, sadness and envy are the progeny of fear; happiness, fulfilment, kindness and generosity are the progeny of love.
Prior to making a conscious effort to allow love to overcome my fear, envy and greed were two of my biggest drivers. At that point, my envy and greed had purely material roots: I had grown up in one of the worst neighbourhoods in my city, where it was seen as a badge of honour to try and remain unemployed as long as possible, whilst knocking up as many girls as one possibly could. The thing is that I’m better than that. As soon as I moved out of that environment, things improved. But, in order to sustain this, greed kicked in. Whilst envy was being dealt with as I could see the abundance of material wealth surrounding me in my new environment, greed meant that I felt the need to try and make up for lost time. I was fortunate enough to work my way up in my industry at a relatively young age. The trouble is that I couldn’t live with myself if I screwed anyone over, so whilst I had the tools to make an absolute killing, my ethics and fear hobbled me to the point where I made only a moderate living in an industry where my peers would be substantially better off than me.
When I thought I’d vanquished my envy and greed, it ended up manifesting itself in a different way. This time, instead of material envy and greed, I succumbed to emotional envy and greed. I wasn’t getting enough nurturing at home, even though I had made the effort to maintain this for a number of years. This could have gone on for many more years, had I not met someone with whom I immediately clicked. I had such a strong connection with the new woman; moreso than I had ever had with my wife. We would talk for hours and it seemed like only minutes. The new woman appreciates culture and is sophisticated; moreso than the lovely girl I married who, whilst she’s no dumbass, her tastes are less complex than mine and thus I find it challenging to have anything other than relatively banal conversations. The envy and greed came back; I was envious of my single friends and I was greedy because I had a relationship with another woman whilst I am in wedlock. By conventional wisdom, this makes me a bad person.
Whilst this liasion isn’t a cause of why I feel the way I do, it is definitely a symptom. My own feelings of letting myself down, letting my wife down and drawing a beautiful and sweet young woman into the morass that passes for my ‘personality’ have caused me extreme pain. I don’t know how to compensate any of them for the trouble I have caused.
Most people are ruled by their emotions. The successful people don’t have to think about or analyse their actions. They are methodical and approach each task methodically. It’s important to just chill out with a beer.
Very true. The old saying about fire being great as a servant and terrible as a master could just as easily apply to emotions.