Love vs Fear.....

It is soooo good to be home. Heaven. Bliss. All that good stuff. Alex is here and Clare and he have resolved to try even more new things and keep having new experiences and that is proving great fun. Clare is also doing one thing a day that really scares her and is outside of her comfort zone. If her head tells her not to do something because she's scared, she does it anyway, just to show her head that she wants to live in Love rather than Fear. It's funny, she sat down and wrote a list of her fears this week and looking at them written down was a strange experience. I think fears can only get a hold on you when you keep them in the dark inside your head, when you get them out into the light, either by voicing them or writing them down, they lose their power. These are the things she is scared of....
Scared of being alone, scared that Baggage isn't as good as she thinks it is, of meeting new people and going to new places, scared of change, scared that people won't like her, scared people she loves will leave her, scared of getting old, scared she's unlovable, scared that Paul could die, or the dogs, scared to go downstairs in the middle of the night, scared of changing lanes on the freeway, scared that some people are only friends with her because of who she knows rather than who she is, scared that people are talking about her behind her back and saying mean things, scared of feeling sad and it never ending, scared of getting her heart broken again, scared that she's made bad choices.......there are so many things to be scared of, and none of these things frighten the life out of her, but they pop up now and again, and fears of these things can only keep you stuck and stagnant.
So instead of focusing on these things, I think the anti-dote is to make an alternative list of things you love and sit in that rather than the other. So here are some things she loves....a random list, but the important thing is to make it longer than the list of fears. Clare love..... the sound of yoooo-hooooo echoing through the house, the feel of newly cleaned sheets, the feel of a fan blowing on her face when she sleeps, the sight of Big running towards her with his ears up and mouth open in laughter, the smell of Bentley's ears, the sight of Alex's car in the driveway when she comes home, writing the sitcom and making it funnier, hiking and making new friends on the path, the sight of a perfect palm tree against a blue sky, diving into the pool on a really hot day, talking to Buckley on the phone, holding her new nephew Luca as he laughs, getting photographs developed and putting them in frames in her bedroom, buying a great pair of jeans, finding out she's lost 3 pounds, the angel she has by her bed, the goosebumps she gets seeing a certain person's name come up on her phone when it rings, her grey woollen hat, friends....all of them.
It's funny I used to think that love was all about the object of that love, like I love that person, or that place or that thing, but then there can so often be an expectation attached and some disappointment, so I think the answer is just to love. I love....I love, not particularly anything, but just that I do is good enough......so that's my lesson for the day. Let's all try and live in love not fear and see what good things come of it.