Fear is the catalyst. It is the ultimate in losing to life. Giving into it is submitting to the total of all that has beat you, which still lives in your heart.

Inevitably, we all are met with choices that demand response, whether immediate or after careful mediation. I hold that at the true center of souls, only two emotions give birth to all others. They cannot be named sufficiently through vocabulary, though we all know these two emotions with sincere intimacy. For me, and many others, love and fear come the closest to the mark.

This love is not romantic, though romance is born from it. This is the beginning of making choices based in a swell of positive feeling. It is the kind of feeling that translates to confidence. Sincerely, it is a powerful fire starter. It is the beginning of inspiration and the end of fear.

This fear is not the same as a running from a rabid dog, and yet again, that fear is born from this place. The fear that I hold critical in my eye is that creeping drip of insecurity. Fear begins in response to wanting to avoid pain.

At its base form, fear is insecurity. Insecurity is fear.

It is the unwillingness to feel indecisive, or unaccepted, or unaccomplished. Even something as small as trying to convince someone you are right, gives us a tinge of fear. We don't want to be wrong.

In Star Wars, Yoda says that fear leads anger, and anger to hate. By my experience this is true. Anger is essentially being upset the pain is here to stay. Your fear has come true, so we lash out. Once anger is traced to its source, is almost always because there is something we initially feared. We fear losing someone or we fear getting too attached because we know the throbbing of torn heartstrings.

From anger it is a short leap to hate. If we can replace our feelings with only contempt, a sturdy wall protects us. Then Yoda tells us something that gets left out of that quote far too often. He says that hate leads to suffering.

Fear ends in suffering because it only serves most often to protect the one. It is concerned with the self and blind to the community. It will get us out “now” as opposed to the “later” which sometimes involves losing what we want in the moment for what we need. The boy who gets into the car of drunk driver to appease his buddies is not so different from the boy who draws a swastika or uses a slur for the same reason.

In this way it is entirely dangerous to listen to the timid voice in our heads without skepticism. It leaves us vulnerable to manipulation, then to violence.

Fear is the easier of the two paths. We don't teach our children to be introspective and discover these truths. We do not live in a culture that celebrates perseverance, or compassion in the face of adversity. We must fight back against that culture that tells us to find the easiest path and to care only of ourselves, and then preys upon our fears.

Choose love.