catelin | Dienekes Was Right

The always interesting and smartly written reive posted an entry yesterday about Gates of Fire and its answer to the question "what is the opposite of fear?" Answer: love.

I wonder if that's it---such a simple answer with so many complex shadings. Sartre said that the opposite of fear is freedom. I suppose that there is a certain freedom in loving or being loved, but I have never found love to be completely detached from fear nor completely curative of it. My greatest fear has always been that I would be abandoned, left alone. It's an odd one considering that I have actually lived much of my life left alone...by parents, lovers, friends. Self-fulfilling prophecy some might say. As for the more mundane fears of certain things (scorpions, kidnappers, serial killers, rapists, etc.), I do think that love is involved in overcoming those. Not that I would overcome them by being loved, but that I would overcome them because of my love for someone else. The best example I can think of is how I feel about my children. I would face anything for them without any hesitation at all...and that is because of love. It is love that spurs the most profound confrontations with our fears in these sorts of cases...the old "mother lifts 18-wheeler off her child" syndrome.

With most of the other more emotional fears I harbor, I have found that their opposite has always been acceptance--not the weak, cloying "oh well" sort of acceptance, but a "this is how it fucking is and I'm going to deal with it in a graceful way" acceptance. I am a Pisces, social to the point of distraction, groomed by my culture and my upbringing for the companionship of a lifelong mate...and it didn't happen, hasn't happened, may not happen. I was afraid of that, terrified actually, when I was younger. Over the years, I became brave in the face of it and I accepted my possible alone-ness without panic or despair. Why? Again, the ultimate answer...love. As I got older, I learned to love myself and to value my worth for what I thought of the person I was. Even when it's a solo endeavor, love is what redeems us. It is what allows us to accept--who we are, what we do, how we live--and to work from there. It softens our jagged edges and lets us be kind when we would otherwise indulge in all sorts of small cruelties. And even if it can't fix everything, it's the only effective balm for just about every human ill I can think of...pity it seems to be in such short supply most of the time.

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I find it odd and amusing when I see a reference in person XXX's journal to someone I know through YYY's journal. I spy on reive because she's on rothko (http://www.livejournal.com/users/rothko)'s friends list, and roth is someone I've talked to for about seven zillion years.... but apparently you've somehow discovered reive too, independently, huh?

statistically speaking, I suppose, it's not quite so weird..... still, I'm amused by the coincidence.

It is odd how people come across one another here, but I have found that there's usually a reason for it...connections (even of the virtual sort) are always cool.

Oh, I'm so happy you posted that. Because the book really affected me and I was hoping people would read that entry and read the book or think about the idea. Yay.

When people have loved me, and I have loved them, I have always braved my fears, even if I didn't need to for them, because in love, there is always encouragement.

don't be fooled by the title, but another AMAZING, life-changing book you should read is called "Conversations with God" (it's not a religious, christian-y type book at all.) The whole premise of the book is an insight about who we are as human beings and one of his MAJOR premises is that the opposite of fear is LOVE, and in actuality, fear and love guide ever human thought and action. your entry was pretty in line with what the book talks about.

I think some things like emotions don't have opposites. For example, my first impulse was to say the opposite of fear was a "love of risks" (you know, like sky-diving, bungy-jumping and philosophy), but on further reflection, I realized that it was probably fear that caused the adrenalin that caused the love of risks.

I don't even think Sartre believed freedom was the opposite of fear. I think he believed freedom was a very scary thing (causing existential angst), but that not accepting freedom was living a life of self-deception.

Is hate really the opposite of love? (I'd even hesitate on this) --but if you accepted this, then the opposite of love would be both fear and hate. Would that make the two equivalent? We often hate what we fear.

I agree with you completely that some emotions don't have polar opposites. I think they are usually much more complex--shades of gray, as opposed to black and white. As for Sartre, you'll have to pardon my faulty memory (I am getting old!). The quote I was actually thinking of is "Freedom is what we do with what has been done to us," which I find to be a supremely profound statement. Nevertheless, I'll probably spend the rest of the day trying to remember where I heard the love/freedom idea. : )

i think that the opposite of love is apathy.

I'm not sure about that. I've always suspected that apathy is just a symptom of other things going on...but that may only be because I am loathe to believe that there are actually people who are truly, at the core, apathetic.

Dienekes Was Right

what a tangled web we weave....

Re: what a tangled web we weave....

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another great book

Random Musings on Fear

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