Fear of Love

I've been wanting to write about the fear associated with love for some time. The fear that we have that love is wild.  Then, we end up trying to control it or reign it in. It is a topic that comes up in various conversations. It leaves me wondering, what are we afraid will happen to us? What will happen if we allow love to truly be present in our lives and move with it as it moves?

We have been taught a concept of love as something to be obtained but it has to fit a certain mold. We have to be able to make it fit into the boxes that we and those before us have created. But love does not operate that way. That is why we see glimpses of love in various ways, through a touch, a smile, a gaze or we see it appear in the beauty that surrounds us. Nature has a way of loving us like no other. When those instances happen though, we push them aside and say it is not right to love in that way and we ignore love, when it is there for us to embrace. Or we explain the experience as less than 'real love'. We reject love out of fear of breaking the mold. And when we are brave enough to step outside those lines, we feel guilty for feeling exactly what we are meant to feel. Based on what? Someone else's interpretation of how we should experience love?

Do we really believe that love can be tamed? Should we even try? Why would we want to?

Love is this gorgeous experience of being fully alive and having the complete freedom to allow it to consume you, to enjoy the movement of it and to be completely in awe of it as a living thing, breathing life into each moment that you give it the attention it so desperately craves.

It is wild, untamed and it is free. Just look at a child given the opportunity to be free, without restraint. What do you see? Complete joy. Taking risks and embracing the moment, rejecting any rules placed on them. They yearn to be completely free and will fight to experience what is their natural path of discovery. We could learn so much from watching our children, as they freely explore their world.

I want to live as I was meant to be, without the narrative that others want me to ascribe to follow. I want to love freely and feel that love completely and fully, apart from any fear that it is too wild, too much or too free. I want to give it freely. There is such pleasure in offering love to another human and  knowing that they are truly accepting what you are offering. You feel valued and completely seen. And you can offer that same acceptance in return.

There is no restraining love. And as we allow ourselves to experience it fully and move where it moves, following the lead of love wherever it presents itself, the fear evaporates and we are just left with ourselves and the love that inhabits us.

Fear is no longer present.
Only love.
Embrace it completely.
It will join you in a beautiful dance that you will never regret.