Identity.

I've heard the angry, selfish cry of fear. The sharp and boisterous clanging of chains binds every part of my soul to nothingness reducing my existence to mere physical evolution. Fear is the seed impregnating my mind to conceive and bear thoughts that would simply exist to betray me, and cause my mind to miscarry the potential developing. It's the poisonous lullaby that soothes my soul into deep sleep hypnotizing me into living a life that will only serve my own ego.

I'm miserable in fear. Anyone and everyone is. It dries you up of all hope and floods you with empty desires and false hopes. It lies because fear is afraid. Fear is afraid. It is a parasite and without you, its host, it would cease to exist. Without you, it would cease to exist. Therefore, be without it so you can exist.

In all my years trying to wrestle with fear, I learn that for one, I'm wrestling with no one and nothing, but a gaping hole in my mind, body, and soul. Just as darkness is the mere absence of light, so is fear the mere absence of the very thing that instead of reduces, raises our existence to both physical and spiritual evolution. Fear is the absence of the seed that is to fill our minds with thoughts that would manifest themselves into metaphoric sculptors and artists creating a masterpiece out of our lives. It is the deafening silence that drowns out the songs our lives brings to the lives of others. If fear debases every aspect of life to their lowest forms, to nothingness, fear then is the absence of the highest form of it raising life even after death.

What deepens the misery of such a gaping hole is that in fear, one loses sight of life and merely thinks of survival. In fear, we immediately fill in that hole with more of ourselves. We often find ourselves afraid of taking risks, giving of ourselves, serving others, losing ourselves for the ones whom we love because we are in fear of failure, rejection, and pain. We are as miserable as we are selfish. I guess what I'm trying to say is, fear makes us selfish and, therefore, miserable beings.

So if not more of ourselves, what? What is this absence missing? What are we missing?

Love. More love.

I went there. I pursued that cliché route of "Love makes the world go round." "Love is all you need." "Without love, I am nothing."
Saint John mentions in his first letters, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us" (4:11-12.)

Furthermore, "Perfect love casts out fear" (1 Jn 4:18.)

To cast out fear, to fill the hole it burns in our hearts, we must look at the perfect example of Love. Jesus Christ teaches us that Love is to "lay down one's life for a friend." To be of service to another. To give oneself to another without fear because perfect love requires nothing in return. It longs for love in return, but will never take it without it being given. Love can never be taken. As it can only be given, love, too, can only give.

Love is the highest form of life. It is what fuels man to experience himself fully. Moreover, Love moves man to Love, Himself. Love is everything. It permeates every aspect of our lives and raises us to be more than our past, and to overcome obstacles beyond our strength. In my own life, I'm learning and discovering just how wide that hole is indicating just how my need for God is endless. I need love to find, to be, and to be united with Love, Himself.

In Dan Millman's autobiography of a Peaceful Warrior, his character, Socrates teaches that "a warrior is not about perfection or victory or invulnerability. He's about absolute vulnerability." By this alone, we know that world cannot offer us truth for it is what's constantly telling us to protect ourselves, to not be susceptible to any physical or emotional attacks. And this again affirms my need for God, for divine intervention in my life.

Take a bird for example. Its principle of action is flying. It is capable of flying because of its form: it has hollow bones, and wings. Now, take man. I can't help but feel that our desire to constantly rise above our situations, our desire to perpetuate every blissful and joyful moments, reveal that we are made for more than any of our conditions. As in, we are made for life. We are made for eternal joy. If this is our principle of action -- overcoming even the seemingly impossible, like death, and attaining eternal joy, I then can see my need for the One who overcame death, the One who promises eternal joy, "I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you" (1 Jn 16:22.) How beautiful. Our forms -- mortal, fearful, selfish beings are not capable of perpetual joy. So yes, we need something greater than ourselves: Love raises us, dignifies, sanctifies, and unites Himself with us so that we may fully experience what it really means to live.

The quest of all mankind: What it really means to live? If fearless, then filled with love. How to do so? I couldn't tell you. No one could, except the unique blueprints and adventures our lives put us through. It's one of those, you'll just know kind of things.

Pope Benedict XVI beautifully explains that the "end goal" of each of our journeys is the mystery of eternal joy, of eternal life. Though it scares us to think that we'd live forever, he says that eternal life is not within the bounds of time. Rather, "It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time -- the before and after -- no longer exists... it is a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy." If Love's promise of eternal life as Pope Benedict XVI explains it is like this, then the truths spoken in Dan Millman's Peaceful Warrior affirms the truths, traditions that to this day, though contradictory to what the world teaches us about our condition, is a testimony to the truth about our divine design.

This is what we're living for.

Made in the image of a creator divine, made for divinity -- made for something more than this. Without this humble step into believing this, I don't think I could ever find myself believing that I am made for more -- capable of doing things I never thought possible. The Peaceful Warrior also learns, "There is no ordinary moment."

The past, the future are both out of controls. We fear so much because for one, we can no longer accept the past, simply forgive it. Secondly, the future is also a gaping hole to us. We can plan, we can save for the future, but just as fear is the absence of love, the future is merely the absence of the present, of time. It is to say that it's non-existent. It's not for us to worry about. All that is ever real is the extraordinary moment we are living in. We are a part of everyone else's moment, we are this moment. Right now.

Fear has taught me that I don't need it and I could not live without Love. Once I found love, it led me to understand everything else about my life from the basics to the inexplicable. Love beyond all measure is found in a life offered for a friend. This, as the Peaceful Warrior says, as Jesus Christ says, is the highest purpose. "We offer service, there is no higher purpose."

From the beginning of time, our thirst for knowledge has been within us, because it is being made for what's essentially Beautiful that keeps us thirsting for the Truth. "Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty." There is beauty despite the pain of one's sacrifice for another because it communicates the truth of Love. There is beauty in hoping because it reveals the truth that there is always more to us, to life. There is beauty because there exists truth. If fear keeps us from doing, it must be love that will give us the strength to live. God is the source of all good things. The absence of all good things is merely His absence. Set Love free, and you'll find yourself no longer a slave of fear, of pride, and, most of all, of yourself.

The answers to life have been placed within us, however, it is one thing to know the truth, living it out is another. Only in living out love does it become performative, transforming us into the best versions of ourselves, to complete ourselves. Broken, scared, weak, love heals us and makes all things new if we allow it, too. In living out love, we'll soon find out that our identities reveal themselves in the manifestation of love between two or more people -- never on our own.

Love. Love more.