Love, Fear and Expectations

I'll be talking about all of  the three topics one by one and at the end we will see how these topics are related to each other. One thing that I can tell you as a preview of the blog is this, love, fear and expectations cannot live under the same roof.
First let's start with expectations. Each of us have some kind of expectations from someone or from life itself. My question is, how important are these expectations in our life? Is it really necessary? To answer these questions lets break down as to why we have expectations in the first place. When we are expecting something from a loved one it's usually connected to a simple feeling-'I did so much for you, so I need you to do the same in return for me' whereas when we are expecting from life it goes like this-'I worked so hard, so I deserve the best there is'. Now coming back to the question of is it really necessary, my answer guess what it is no. the reason is pretty simple expectations when left unfulfilled will bring disappointments and sorrow. But then we think what if they do come true, won't it serve us as hope or motivation. Sure when you think like that it is quite possible that expectations might give you some kind of motivation but think like this, for the people who have expectations from their loved ones- expectations takes root in our heads until and unless you openly speak about them how will they understand what you need, one thing I can guarantee even without meeting them is this, they are not God, secondly don't you think by keeping expectations from them you are forcing your will onto the other person. Keeping expectations sounds like you are doing a business in terms of love where you are actually thinking about profit and loss. Is this the kind of love you want in your life? 

Okay now coming to the people who have expectations from life. Tell me something, can you control all the unseen circumstances that will effect the results of your hard work? Then what's the point in expecting things from the future/life .There is no way you can. Now some of you might be believers of Law of attraction, manifestations, and for those who don't know about it- it's a process where you believe you can achieve whatever you wish for and the universe makes it happen for you.  I'll be honest with you, I do believe in the notion, 'What you think it becomes' but I feel it is only applicable to our self or personality, how you think about yourself is what you become eventually but it does not work on manifesting material things like getting money, abundance, etc. The universe always gives you what you need which means, what is meant to be yours will come to you eventually and what's not meant to be will leave your life. There will be times where what you need and what you want may coincide, if they do be happy for it and if they don't then be grateful for it because you have successfully avoided a major distress in your life. Put your efforts where you feel happy and content and where you don't care about winning, gaining or loosing. You do it for your own sake, for your pleasure and not for survival. Focus your attention to the task at hand and not to the unknown future. Live for satisfaction not for conquering.

Next up is fear and love. In terms of English literature, the exact opposite of love is hatred but in reality what I think is, the opposite of love is fear. These two terms are like opposite polls of the same magnet.  They both are the predominant feelings that run our society since ancient times. For the time being lets focus on fear. You see love is quite hard to explain so we will approach in terms of what love is not. Love will slowly start to make sense. Fear is said to be natural, in fact we have seen a lot of movies/books define courage not as devoid of fear but rather accepting and moving beyond fear. Fear is not natural in fact fear is just an illusion of what may or may not happen with or around you. There are different phobias and types of fears. We fear the devil (in whom I don't believe because putting the blame of your own mistakes onto some supernatural entity is just weird. If you have committed a mistake/sin own it, nobody forced you to do it. Sure temptation exists but fulfilling that temptation is completely your choice). We even fear God, who has given you life, a chance to live . I am mostly focusing on three of them- fear of loosing someone, fear of loosing something and fear of dying. The most haunting of the three is fear of loosing someone special to you, isn't it? and half of the time this fear is even termed as love. How is fear used to define love? Okay think this way, why do you fear to loose them, answer comes because they mean something to me. Ask yourself this, why do they mean something? Because they have done special things for me and they make me feel safe, protected and comfortable. So you love them only because they have done something to please you, if a day comes when they stop doing that then it means this love that you claim to have will turn into hatred, isn't it?. If your bond is broken by something as foolish as this then you were never in love to begin with. 

Coming to fear of loosing something, it could be anything like money, job, status, happiness, etc. First of all are you sure the things that you claim to be "yours" is really yours. Confused? Alright, did you bring anything with you when you came to this world? No you didn't. Your own blood and body is borrowed from your parents. Then you grow up, work really hard and accomplish all that you desire, you start to pile it up one by one claiming it yours by adding your name on it then comes a time where you are on your death bed and that time what you said was yours gets transferred to someone else and in the end you go to your grave empty handed so much so that you can't even take your own body. So why do you fear of loosing something which was never really yours to begin with. Sure you worked real hard and put your own sweat and blood to get all that but in reality you just rented those things for a very short amount of time and you never owned anything at all. 

The last one fear of dying. This one gets connected to the other two fears as well. Loss of life whether it is your own life or someone else's, we fear so much so that we don't even like talking about it aloud. Is not talking about it will change the fact that they won't die. Each of us are entitled to die, today or tomorrow and we are well aware of it. Yet we still take the time we spend with our loved ones, with our selves, for granted. We instead wish that death may never knock on our doors. Death is what makes life so precious but still we never really want to acknowledge that part. Each breadth you take with your loved ones counts so make it count by actually appreciating it and not by fearing about something which is bound to happen. Today is your day when you say, 'I love you', 'thank you' and 'sorry'. So that tomorrow if either one one of you lies in your deathbed, you get to leave this world without any regrets or unexpressed feelings and with a beautiful smile on your face. 

Now finishing it up with love. You see fear and expectations both start with 'I', 'my', 'me', 'mine'. Love knows no such words. It always begins with 'you' and 'yours'. Love that has fear and expectations is nothing but mere attachment or attraction, it has nothing to do with love at all. Love knows to give not take. Fear of loosing someone puts this question in your mind, do you want something from them or do you earn just for their presence. Expectations raises the question, are you trading your love for theirs or are you just taking their freedom. If you have fear and expectations in your heart then you will never taste the essence of true love. Love has no conditions, it is born from unconditionality. It begins with 'I am yours' rather than 'You are mine'. 

Like I said before, when you are in a relationship you cannot expect your partner to miraculously read your mind and start behaving the way you want them to. You have to speak what you want and clear things but don't expect them to obey you rather come to a point of mutual understanding. Loving someone does not complete you, but loving yourself definitely completes you. There is no such thing as love at first sight, no love happens in a single day and if it does then it's not love it's just infatuation. It takes time and energy from both sides. Do not fall in love instead rise in it. Do not bind yourself through love, love is always for freeing yourself. It's okay if you don't feel rushing into a relationship, it is okay to be unsure but that doesn't mean it is okay to cheat while in a relation, you and them both deserve the better than that. When you go out to shop for clothes, do you pick the first dress that you lay your eyes on or do you go through racks of clothes before you finally choose 'the one'. Similarly even in a relationship before you commit yourself for life be absolutely sure about it. 

Remember this, You love not to complete yourself but rather you love to share your completeness with each other. Once you start loving someone without these questions- 'how he/she treats me', 'what will they do for me', 'how he/she looks', 'how do they make me feel', that's the day you say, 'I'm truly in love with you'. 

-By Radha