Choosing our perspective: fear or love?
Choosing Our Perspective: Fear or Love?
This article is for Michael. I met Michael several years ago and it was he who taught me to ask this question, "Do I choose to live this moment in fear or love?" This one question changed my life profoundly.
Michael was a 32 year old young man with the world by the tail. He was an up and coming senior executive in a successful company, well liked by friends and family and beginning to explore his spirituality. Not to mention he was absolutely gorgeous to look at! We attended a Thursday evening class together and quickly became friends. Within a few months of knowing him, he was told by his company he would once again be getting yet another promotion. This time a full physical exam was required. His life was about to take a dramatic shift.
Like a speed slap in the dark, the results of the assessment concluded he had a virulent form of cancer and was given less than a year to live. His healthy body and active cells in fact were a detriment to living longer. He was warned that the pain would intensify over time and his body would deteriorate quickly. Michael called me when he heard and we sat together as he wept for all that would never be for him.
Michael didn't waste much time on self pity. Instead he stepped up his spiritual discovery experience and began a journey that blessed the lives of all who knew him.
Michael began to create what he called conversation circles in his home. They were open to anyone who was curious about the question, "Do I choose to live this moment in fear or love?" The world became very simple to him. Each moment was a unique and fleeting one of choice.
To live life in fear provides an opportunity to cower from the world and all beings in it. Every fear imaginable can be played out. There is a choice to fear rejection, the weather, the economy, people who are different, the loss of a job, a relationship. The possibilities are endless. If we stay in fear long enough we can totally incapacitate ourselves. We can shrivel and die.
To live in love there is the choice to reach out and embrace each and ever moment. We can learn attributes of courage and strength, vulnerability and compassion. Loving allows us to greet each day as magic and full of adventure. We choose forgiveness and non judgment, joy and the messiness of living. We expand to meet our passion and our potential contribution to other. We embrace the fact that we are all interdependent. In loving others we learn to truly love ourselves as simply magnificent human beings.
Before long Michael's living room would not hold all the people who wanted to join his conversation circle so more were started in local churches and community halls. Each day as Michael's body deteriorated he continued to facilitate the dialogues and encouraged each person he met to ask the question every day.
Over time Michael became too ill to leave home and was very physically weak. Instead he asked those of us who knew him if we would continue smaller circles back in his home where he could be part of the experience as he lay in his bed. He had time for every person who wished to speak with him. His emaciated body literally began to glow from within.
On the last day of his life when speaking was too difficult, in a shaky hand he wrote to me, "Choose love". Since that day I do my best in all my humanness to choose love. Some days my best isn't too stellar and still I choose love.
In turn I pass on Michael's gift of a challenging question to you. Do you choose to live this moment in fear or in love?