In one of the many...
Illustration
In one of the many philosophies he had explored during his college years he had come across the idea that the opposite of love was not hatred or anger but fear. The idea had startled him at the time, but over the years he had come to know its wisdom. For anger and hatred are malignancies that grow out of fear, as deadly to the well-being of the soul as cancer can be to the physical self. He had been searching for himself back then, reading everything he could find. This idea about love and fear remained one of the most powerful he had encountered. From that time on, whenever he had felt anger or hatred he had pulled away from the emotion as a mental observer, looking to see if fear truly was the source. It wasn't long before that question was thoroughly answered. Then his question changed from "Is fear present?" to "What are you afraid of?" Generally, when he was able to identify his fear, the anger, hatred, disgust, dislike or whatever degree of negativity he had responded with would dissipate. There were, of course, exceptions. He remained deeply angry with some people because he feared what they represented. But the flame of everything that was good in him, created from love, continued to burn, slowly consuming even his engrained anger, a malignancy which otherwise would have consumed him. -- Fannin
