When Fear Has Been The Norm – Be The Light

When Fear Has Been The Norm – Be The Light



I’ve wondered before about what love really is. I haven’t found an answer to that question, however I have certainly come to a place where I see pieces that were missing from past experience.

Love is something that hits you and it seems to fix, brighten and colour up your entire world in a blink, in a hug, in a look, in a kiss. With so much magic and ease, something seems to arrive and change everything for good. Whatever cloud you had on top of your head and inside your soul simply vanishes away just like the sun shines after a storm.

Love comes and goes, people say. But I want to defer here. I don’t think it’s such a thing. I think love is always there instead. Why do people think love comes and goes? May be because they’re thinking of love as something that comes only from the outside? That must be it. But that’s not true.

Certainly love from partners, friends or others can come and go, accordingly to the relationship and connection we share. But that’s an outside love. What about the inside love? The one we have and cultivate for ourselves? Do you see the difference?

Right…


No one taught us how to love ourselves…


I had this thought coming to me last night and it hit me. I have been someone always in steady relationships, having shared quality time with very few partners but solid time of love and connection. I have been loved by family and friends far more than my own understanding of it through life.

I have been surrounded by love…

…Yet I never felt truly loved.

There was always love coming to me from the outside, endlessly. My goodness, how blessed I’ve truly been. But there was always something missing. And I don’t mean romantic love but also family love and any other kind of love you can think of.

It never felt complete. I never felt complete. Always carrying some infinite emptiness within.

How can you be surrounded by so much love and still not feel loved enough?

It might have taken me 38 years to understand this but I think I have arrived to some answers to these questions, the peak of it all anyway.

Love outside of me, all around me, but little love inside of me.

Yeah…no one taught us how to love ourselves.

There is something missing in the system. My parents loved me to bits, life brought family ruptures, parental divorce, social pressures that kids naturally fail to understand, repeated sense of loss and other circumstances like anyone in the world, but I had never addressed these as reasons for such a lack of self awareness and self love.

In such experiences, our personalities are built. And so are built our lacks and unfulfilled needs. It’s the same for all of humanity regardless, east or west, north or south. And as obvious as it may seem, what a deep wound we have all carried and it’s only starting to come out now, as humanity starts to wake up from a long long sleep.

In the process of growing up we seem to be taught everything so clearly about society, about the system, how to read, to write, to study, to behave around others, to think about the future, and too worry about the future too.

But yet again, no one ever taught us about our emotions, about our feelings. About how to love, accept and enjoy ourselves.

Who ever addressed a little boy’s tears as something acceptable, even necessary?

Who ever addressed that little girl, confused and unable to react when others would mock her for her hair, or her dress or her inability to make a simple decision at times?

Who ever addressed the fact that kids, as much as adults, need hugs and physical gestures of nurturing love? A simple reassurance of safety.

I can recall endless times as a kid asking my mum why didn’t she love me enough, or crying for having to switch homes, for not knowing what to order in a restaurant, for not wanting to go play with certain kids or in certain places, just being questioned and pushed to do the thing while having to swallow one’s own tears – “like everyone else, toughen up kiddo!” All I remember hearing was “oh, why she cries so much?” I can see their faces and it honestly breaks my heart nowadays as I gain this new understanding.

We have lived so far in a society that focused towards the outside. How to live for others, work for others, think for others, worry for others. We must certainly do good deeds and help others, but even this society won’t reinforce as much. Our upbringing has been a selfish one for centuries. And with it came a deep and distorted conditioning of the mind where fear has been the norm.

Fear to express, to be, to feel. And with these came fears of being judged, of rejection, of not being good enough..ending up in insecure human beings who would stay quiet and slowly forget what their real self, their real personality is really like.


We have forgotten our essence, our nature. And it’s time to wake up.



It’s time to come back to ourselves, to remember so that a new way of living can be breed from now on.

I began writing this piece thinking how I might have been afraid to love again, yet it became a deeper understanding of how we have not been taught or shown how to love ourselves, as a unity and also as a whole.

It’s day #50 during this pandemic lockdown. And I really hope we’ve all been taking some time to think deeper, to get to know ourselves, our loved ones too, so that we can understand how we’ve been living life up until now and how we want to choose to live it from this point onwards.

More consciously, more aware, with more freedom until we fully come to see, enjoy and unleash the real us.

We have lived a fear-based live with a fear-based mindset built by society through time. It’s okay, but it’s time to change. And what does this change look like? Nothing outrageous, nothing dramatic, nothing apocalyptic. Instead, it looks simply like choosing your thoughts every day, choosing your liking, your opinions, yourself, with respect every day. Without fear of how others will think of you, without fear of others loving you less.

That’s all only an illusion. Because when you see someone shine, even more someone you love, your only and best feeling for them is absolute happiness. Someone’s growth and someone’s light becomes your own.

This is how we turn now to see how fear doesn’t need to be the norm anymore.

Can you see it?


See the light, be the light. You are the light.


Image credits by Unsplash

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