Be Not Afraid of Love: Lessons on Fear, Intimacy, and Connection

by Mimi Zhu

Love is] ‘the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. . . . Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action.’ ”[*] I often contemplate this definition and learned that spiritual growth needs to be reciprocal within any loving relationship, whether romantic, platonic, or familial.

Much of the advice we have been taught to give and receive reduces the depths of grief to shallow waters. Despite their good intentions, these responses normalize a careless dismissal of the profoundness of our feelings, even when we are mourning the inevitability of death or separation.

“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”

We must remember that it is not love that we are afraid of. We fear the abandonment, betrayal, violence, and abuse that come with the complexities of human trauma and relationships. We cannot fear love because love is embodied. Just as air only becomes breath when it is held within our strong expansive lungs, love only comes into existence through us. If we fear love, then what we truly fear is ourselves. We can never be separated from love.

During our lifetimes, we will experience love with dawning clarity. Moments in love will appear to us in sudden bursts of light, interlacing themselves elegantly in the relationships that we nurture, and in beautiful, random, serendipitous experiences. Love, like the grand sky, cannot be captured by us and locked in a cage. Love is constant and is the force that keeps us alive. Love is as mutable, undefinable, divine, and essential as the great atmospheric beyond. Love is not obtained; love is embodied. Love is freeing, and loving is free.