We do everything we do out of fear or love

Simple is powerful. However, what I do or write almost always begins with too many words, too many ideas, and too many steps. This became clear after I began publishing cooking recipes in 2010.

I would develop a recipe for a tasty meal and publish it. As I continued to make the meal from memory I would often forget steps or fail to include some ingredient. This forgetfulness occasionally led to disappointing results, but plenty of times I got tasty meals with less time and effort. I have updated recipes with simpler versions many times.

My first draft as a writer almost always includes saying each thing two or three times. The challenge of succeeding drafts is making each point once.

Simple ideas are often the result of a lot of hard work, so I pay attention when I hear a simple idea.

One of the simple ideas that I got from my recent 8-day retreat at Ignatius House was that we do everything we do out of fear or love.

I’ve recognized for a long time that anger is my go-to emotion and had learned to be suspicious that anger was hiding something else that I found more unpleasant than anger. I often discovered fear underneath my anger. So the idea of fear being THE root of negative feelings and behaviors sounded right to me.

I am less expert in the area of positive feelings and behavior, but the idea of love being THE root sounded right to me too.

Life can be oversimplified, but I think there is something to the idea that everything we do is about fear or love.

These ideas are already proving helpful to me. My wife got mad about something I said. I would normally have jumped right into arguing that my observation was accurate, but when she got angry, I wondered what she was afraid of. Fearful people need hugs, not arguments, so I didn’t argue. I don’t think I actually hugged her at the time, but I didn’t make things worse by arguing that I was right and that was progress.

It has been useful to me to wonder what I am afraid of when I notice that I am angry or frustrated. I am sure that I will have stories to tell you about that soon.