I’ve thought about the love is the opposite of fear concept before. It never quite added up for me. When it comes to emotions, it’s difficult to draw exact opposites, because emotions are rooted in evolutionary biology, which are interleaved with behavioral tendencies.

There is the approach vs. avoidance dichotomy. And love could be thought of an approach emotion, and fear one of avoidance. But even that is not consistent, because since we are human and we have culture, for instance: we can learn how to use fear to approach challenges rather than avoid them.

What I sense in your statement is a judgment of fear itself. From my perspective here, fear is perfectly healthy, normal, and vital for any physical, sentient being. It can lead to disaster, yes, but that’s only if it’s not *worked with* properly, constructively, mindfully. As a species, we are on the brink of validating this scientifically for ourselves, at a much broader scale — it just takes time for science to get the message out.

Meaning that research is showing how humans have an incredible ability to change their thoughts and thus their emotions in balanced ways, such that negative emotions can actually be transmuted into very positive outcomes.

If anything is the opposite of love, I would say that it’s apathy. But even apathy seems to be rooted in another emotion, perhaps hatred? And even hatred is related to love very directly. That’s why I don’t have a clear answer of how to draw opposites. And that’s where I think a lot of misunderstanding about love comes in. People pedestel it as the ultimate human emotion, but I think it can best be measured by human action, or in some cases, inaction. Yes, it’s a feeling, it’s possible to claim feeling love, while not acting in loving ways. Cue to codependency.

Anyway, these are excellent questions you bring up Count Sneaky. Slowly, I hope to tackle them more. But for the time being, the focus is on showing how important it is to work with all of our emotions, because all of them are of value to us in one way, or perhaps many. :)

I agree with you that caring about at least one other person does so much more than reading any personal development book. But even then, care can be considered a cliched term as well, because everyone has their own definition of what it means to “love” someone, some of which are very dysfunctional. That’s why for the purpose of this site, I defined love as an action, so that readers will know what I mean by the term.

I believe that learning to care for yourself first is the foundation to caring for anyone else. Yes, the two help each other out, but the world has a lot of suffering because we allow for and inflict a lot of suffering on ourselves… and that would take a whole book to write about!

Glad you enjoyed “vomit and kittens” as well, lol. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the article.

Patty, thank you for the book recommendation. :) Yes, a tough sell is the descending into the dark night of the soul. But descending and finding yourself again is *priceless.* It seems like the only way to trust that process is to hear from others who made it out.

It’s definitely that obsession, at least pronounced here in the U.S. — on quick fixes — that accounts for much of the empty polarized “happy” movement in personal development, and “love & light” movement of the the New Age. But many people are seeing through those illusions and looking toward balance instead.

Thanks everyone for making this a lively discussion and sharing your experiences!