Choose love over fear.......please

The past couple of weeks have been very difficult for the community that I live in.

Two young men, (boys really) died as a result of a heroin overdose.

When a tragedy like this happens, people can go two different ways...

Either they open their hearts in support and feel sorrow and  compassion for the families that were not able to save their child from drug addiction.
OR
 They close their hearts in fear and believe that they are immune to such a horrible tragedy because they are "good parents". 

I saw both reactions over the past few days. My initial response was to get angry at those who chose to look at the tragedy as something that happens to someone else, more specifically to someone who "didn't parent well enough".

My heart was broken for the families who lost their children to this awful drug. My anger towards those who sat in judgement of those families consumed me for longer than I wanted it to.

Then I remembered that in Conversations with God, An Uncommon Dialogue, author Neale Donald Walsh says that there are only two emotions that underlie all thoughts, all words, and all actions. Everything we think, say, or do stems from these two basic emotions.  

They are LOVE and FEAR. 

With this in mind, I began to understand that those who chose to react with judgement were afraid.  Afraid to see the truth in the reality that no one is immune from tragedy and that much of life is beyond our control. That no matter how hard we try to make things perfect and do the right things, we can still suffer terrible losses. In fact we WILL still suffer terrible losses. 

This hard truth can be scary as hell, but we have a choice of how we will live with this truth.

We can choose to live our lives from a place of LOVE...... or we can choose to live our lives from a place of FEAR.

When we live from a fearful place, we can project our fear onto others by judging them, comparing our lives to theirs, or competing with them. We close our hearts and our eyes to the pain and fear that resides in us to avoid having to face the uncertainty of life.

When we choose to live from a loving place, we are empathetic, understanding, and accepting of others as well as ourselves. We open our hearts and our eyes despite the pain and fear that resides in us, and we face the uncertainty of life with faith and humility.

Becoming aware of the underlying fear in people helped me to let go of my anger towards those who judged the parents of the young men who died. I can honestly say that I feel sorry for them. They are missing out on so much by living in fear.

My hope for us all is that when, "fear knocks on the door, love will answer."

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