One of the first things I saw this morning was an announcement that Sudan, the last male white rhino on the earth, has died. This filled me with an unutterable sadness. So I explored that because my sadness had a lot of the characteristics of fear: I felt myself closing down, wanting to hide, drawing into myself.
Perhaps sadness is one of the most subtle forms of fear because it can disguise itself as love. I love animals and all the diversity of wildlife that surrounds us. To know that a species is teetering on the brink of extinction - especially because of humans - is abhorrent to me. But when does sadness move away from Love and move towards Fear? And are there different levels of Fear, some healthy and some not?
I think I've come to the conclusion that fear becomes unhealthy when it turns irrational, becomes destructive. It's one thing to be afraid of a bat that's gotten into your house when you know there have been cases of rabies in the local population; it's a different level of fear when you see one swooping around outside and frantically begin swinging a shovel to keep it away from you...and in the process knock out a light or hit someone in the head!
It's one thing to acknowledge the pain and danger a terrorist organization can inflict and strive to shut them down; it's quite another level of fear to mistrust other innocent people who had the misfortune of being born in the same country as a terrorist.
Likewise, it's one thing to be afraid of the loss of a species and use that fear to motivate you into making a change in our conservation efforts; it's quite another level to become furious and vow to go out and kill poachers.
Taking a life because a life has been lost is not coming from Love. Love would not do that. Remember? Love opens up, it stays, it shares, it heals.
One of the other concepts I've been trying to come to grips with is that we need both Love and Fear. For one thing, we can't recognize one without the other. As so succinctly put in the Tao Te Ching:
When people see things as beautiful,
Ugliness is created.
When people see things as good,
Evil is created.
I do believe this is one of our main purposes in life: to remember that we are part of a Great Love. But that is difficult to do if you have nothing to compare yourself to. So there is a Great Non-Love created so that we can recognize the difference.
In other words, we won't recognize Love until we recognize Fear. It has to exist, and it has its uses. But as said in my first post, things have seemed to tilt too far one way lately. There is Fear - even Terror - everywhere. In my own way, I'm trying to inject a little more Love back into the mix. And I try to avoid spreading the Fear. There are enough people out there doing it already. Some days, it seems like such a small gesture...but if enough of us make the small gesture, perhaps we can find some equilibrium again.
Which do you want to choose today?
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