Whatever else is true about anything that is alive, what MUST be true is that what is alive, has at least one preference. 

Life prefers to maintain the conditions for life. When all other options are equally available, life expends energy to influence the outcome in favor of these life-preserving conditions.

At its simplest, life knows what it prefers. The unknown...

And the unknown, by definition, could be anything. It could even be deadly.

But if you like something, you survived it. So you can remember it.

And that's the other thing that life does. It remembers. It has to. Otherwise it can't choose. And if life can't choose anything...

It isn't alive.

There is always a choice, even if that choice is between giving up and trying something impossible, a shitty choice is STILL a choice.

That is the difference between love and fear.

You can only fear the unknown. If you know something, you understand it. And if you understand something, you also understand how to deal with it. If you don't know how to deal with something, you don't actually understand it. 

You only know something when you know what to do about it, which means the only reason to fear ANYTHING is because you don't know how to deal with it.

Imagine for a moment that you are alone, naked in the woods. In the middle of the night. No weapons or tools around you, just your naked body versus whatever snarling predators claws are planning to menace you with unseen claws. That would be scary, right?

What does your mind do when confronted with that scenario? Does it imagine ways to defend yourself? Do you think of reasons why that situation would never happen? Do you make a joke about it?

These are the many faces of fear.

You don't simply imagine yourself being ravaged by a predator, helpless as you are meekly slaughtered. 

• You fight
• You escape
• You hide

Or as you would have learned in high school, fight, flight, and freeze. The responses of fear. So strong that even in your mind, just being confronted with the idea you could not simply allow it to happen. Your mind searches for ways to keep on living.

And as a general rule of thumb, the things you like won't kill you. At least not right away. Certainly they can at LEAST distract you from whatever you are afraid of. And if it won't kill you and it relieves you from suffering...

It DID help you survive in a way. Fear is the mind killer. A little indulgence can distract you from your fear for long enough that the stress clears from your mind. And your mind, once unburdened, is better able to do the one thing that is required to banish your fear forever.

Learn about what you fear well enough to deal with it.

And that begins with love. 

Love is nothing more and nothing less than unconditional, positive regard. Love is the wellspring of acceptance and curiosity. And curiosity is the feeling that precedes investigation and exploration. Fear does not allow for luxuries like love or curiosity - only survival.

But curiosity, as a product of comfort and a lack of stress, is simply the hunger for knowledge.

And knowledge IS power. 

If power is simply a choice to apply influence towards a result, then knowledge is what makes such a choice possible. Which is why we fear what we do not understand, because what we do not understand we cannot influence. 

Fear is incredibly useful when you need to act without thinking.

To Fight.

To Flee.

To Freeze.

But it sucks for helping you think through a situation. To think through a situation, you need time to study and understand it. You need to know it well enough to be able to reliably predict the future. And only by being curious about it, to learn to appreciate it - to have unconditional positive regard for it because you understand it without having to concoct a story where you are the hero and the object of your consternation is the villain - can you understand it well enough to be able to deal with it.

Because you don't need to understand EVERYTHING about it.

You simply have to understand your RELATIONSHIP to it. What you can do, and what you can't. What sort of influence you have, and what influence you don't. 

These are not things you can choose. These are only things you can discover about your relationship with whatever it is you fear. 

Which means the first thing you need to understand is that you fear yourself.

You fear your own limitations, which you do not yet understand until you properly explore them. You cannot know what you will fail at until you fail at it. And you cannot know you will fail it again if you do not try it again. And you will never know that you can never learn something until you have tried to learn it forever.

In fact, that's called practice. Failing at something until you don't.

But why practice?

Love.

There is something you like so much, that regardless of how many times you fail trying to get it, you keep trying until you succeed. And over time, you fail less and less, and you get success faster and faster. And the way that gets you what you want the fastest is what you keep trying to do. Because even though it's work...

It's worth the effort.

That's the thing about love - it's worth the effort. In fact, love is the foundation of effort, because there is no reason to have effort without love.

Fear without love is endless suffering. It is the loss of all hope.

And what situation is so hopeless, that it is worth enduring indefinitely? What situation isn't worth at least ATTEMPTING to change FOREVER, rather than suffering through FOREVER? If you MUST spend an eternity... would you rather spend that eternity helpless and hopeless, or hopeful and curious?

Which attitude do you think will create more opportunities to escape even inescapable circumstances?

Love is a superior foundation, because it is real. Because love is inside of you. Love is why you connect. Love is why you smile. Love is why you continue to breathe.  And Love is why you will continue to fear, because Love is worth holding onto, and holding onto anything takes effort. And we FEAR to lose what we love.

Which means love comes first. You cannot fear losing something you do not love. You must love it first, before you can fear its absence or loss.

But perhaps more importantly, what sort of foundation do YOU want for your life?

A foundation where you are constantly resisting, and struggling against the unknown?

Or a foundation where you are constantly learning and grateful for the many new options and power you have gained thanks to your curiosity?