“The second test is that love knows no fear… Does the lamb love the lion? The mouse, the cat? The slave, the master?… With love never comes the idea of fear.”
— Swami Vivekananda
Swamiji gives the example of a young mother. If a dog barks at her on the street, she flees into the nearest house, frightened. But if a lion attacks her child on the same street, where will you find her? At the mouth of the lion, protecting her child? Love conquered her fear.
“It is much safer to be feared than loved,” Niccolo Machiavelli famously wrote. But when we want to be feared, it’s also because we are living in fear. We try to weaponize this emotion to control others, but how long can such fear suppress the spirit that wants to be set free?
There can be no control or suppression in love, only acceptance — of situations, of people, and of ourselves. Love can conquer all your fears and live a life free of regret, anxiety, and misery.