I recently sat down for dinner with a a few friends who are going through (*or are about to go through) some major transitions…where life is concerned…where love is concerned.
And who have expressed that they are terrified!
Fear is a funny thing; it strikes at the heart of you, sometimes when your not expecting it, other times when you are in full awareness of its presence…feeling it in the pit of your stomach, deep, churning, numbing and so uneasy.(*very close to the butterflies you first feel when struck with love and it all seems so out of your control. Interesting isn’t it, how fear and love feel relatively the same on some basic physical level?)
Life is scary. Period.
Love is scary. Period.
But that is life and that is love. More importantly, that is where it is our responsibility to choose…to actively choose, what we want to experience and how we want to grow as individuals, as humans, as beings.
The whole of our existence is based on choices.
The whole of our existence is based on free will; free will over our thoughts, and words, as well as our actions.
On that note, our greatest choice is to choose between love and fear, as one cannot exist in the presence of the other. While we may believe they can co-exist, we cannot choose both…it’s an either/or situation…there is no inbetween.
It is like light and darkness; if light is present, darkness disappears…if the light is absent, darkness appears…thus, the choice between love and fear is the most basic, and the most important, choice we have.
I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere in this mess of time people forgot one key thing; that they have control, that they are the ones who are making the choices, they are the ones who are in each and every moment actively deciding their destiny…in which way they wish to grow…and which path they are choosing to experience.
That is whats it’s all about anyways…the growing; placing yourself in situations that force you to break old habits, detach from old ways, heal hurts and learn from new experiences what and who you are…or have been…and are going to be.
But that in and of it self is a choice…one must choose to grow.
One must be willing to fully embrace the chance that they may “fail”…
scary thought, huh?
That’s part of the challenge…in order to grow, one must be willing to fully let go…to relinquish control…to surrender to the unknown…and trust…that whatever is meant to happen…will…that what ever the outcome…it was for their own highest good…their own personal good…that it was a lesson set out specifically for them, that they choose to learn from…that they choose to experience…that they choose.
Even if it isn’t what they wanted…or thought they wanted…in that moment of deciding.
This is where I find it gets tricky…we all have the active choice to choose…to decide for ourselves which path we are going to walk down…which emotions we are going to experience…which fears we are going to overcome…and which higher good we are going to learn from…however, in that we must be willing to let go of the outcome…of the decided plan for things…of the expectation.
That’s where I think it gets scary…where the fear comes from…where the lessons to be learned live.
Expectation…a big word…with an even bigger height to fall from.
It is those expectations that don’t allow for the room to grow… instead starting a ball rolling out of control…placing bars around us that suffocate and confine our souls.
They cause us to be blinded…to become confused…to see things not as they actually are…or could be…instead seeing them for what we would have them be…because its what we want.
Then, when we don’t get them, or they don’t turn out the way we expected…we end up disappointed; in the situation, in life, and in ourselves…creating a vicious circle of finding another source of expectation, another way that things could/would/should/be…another set of hopes or pre-programmed roads that we think things will go down…even when our own better judgment tells us not to.
Even when we know better.
because…
it’s easier then letting go of the control we want to have over life…
it’s easier then chancing heartache and sadness…
it’s easier to hope for the best…and as such…expect it…
…simply…without all of the pretty grammarical big words…
it’s just that…easier.
Easier to shy away, hide, deny, separate, run, cling…to stop ourselves from falling…to back away from what scares and/or challenges us…to be afraid of the one thing we all desire and yearn for…
to love…and be loved in return.
Therein lies the most important questions of all; how do we let go of expectations?…how do we not hope for an outcome that we so desire?…how do we place our trust in the universe? (wholly and completely)…and how do we allow ourselves to have faith that it will all work out in the end…when all we are feeling is the fear?
I guess it all comes down to choice…
so…
Which will you choose?…now…in five minutes…in 2 hours…tomorrow…
It is an ongoing decision…to choose…to live…to love…and don’t worry when you “slip and fall”, it’s simply a reminder that you do indeed have a choice.
So which will you choose, this time? And next? And next? And next? …
If you ask me, we might as well choose Love and be Love, since that’s who we really are…at our core…and all we’re searching to find anyways.
As for the fall, don’t worry too much about it, there is always someone there to catch you <3
