Dear President-Elect Trump:
Fear is the world’s dominant power—that is when love is not present. With the emergence of love, fear first shrinks, then cowers in love’s presence. Fear does have one advantage over love: It is easier to attain.
Being easier to attain than love, fear works to consolidate its power by derailing us from love’s quest. Like a thirsty hiker who drinks from a muddy pond because he believes himself to worn out to reach the mountain spring that is still a ways away, fear first persuades us to content ourselves to use tools and power which have their roots in fear. Fear next shames us from pursuing love, and we limit ourselves out of shame or embarrassment.
Hence—we rarely see politicians seeking power through love. For if they lay down their tools of fear to achieve the power of love, the risk of losing is too significant. Accordingly, politics plays out like fights between packs of dogs who are too afraid to stop fighting for fear of losing the advantage. You don’t bring love to a dog fight, or politics, fear argues. And being fearful, most of us believe it.
Fear dulls our senses to the reality of love’s power. Once thus anesthetized, fear rules unabated until we awake to the real power differential that exists between love and fear.
Hopelessness, discouragement, anger, hatred, self-centeredness, pride, mocking, lack of feeling, demeaning of others are all tools of fear. Fear’s tools are so intoxicating and habit-forming, that we find it dauntingly difficult to sober up long enough to realize the damage that they do to us and all around us.
The power of fear is not so slowly strangling America. Allowing love into our political and societal dialogues will cause fear to shrivel and shrink at love’s arrival. The power is within each of us.
Sincerely,
David O. Leavitt
