Fear and Priorities

I realized something yesterday as I wrote my first post and touched on the topic of fear.  Fear can be a mis-prioritizer.  (I don't think that's a word, but it made such sense to me that I'm including it here.)  In my life, fear so often gives priority to the unimportant, effectively masking the thought or action that should take precedence.  This "mis-prioritizing" just happened yesterday.  Thanks to the endless questions of my son - who isn't afraid to ask a complete stranger about something that has aroused his curiosity - I was in a conversation with someone I didn't know, someone who was clearly troubled.  I wanted to extend compassion to that person in a tangible way, but instead I prioritized the voice that said I would stand out or look weird if I acted.  So my heart's desire was stifled for a moment.  But there have been other moments when my heart won the day, and remembering those moments encourages me to keep at the work of prioritizing.


Fear, by the way, might get mentioned often in these posts.  Not because I like fear, but because it has been an enemy of my authenticity for so many years.  It took me a long time to realize that the voice which so often negated my ideas and dreams was the voice of fear.  That the voice which said "But what if..." or "But then again..." or other reasonable sounding phrases wasn't really the voice of reason or good thinking.  It was the voice of fear.

Is courage the opposite of fear?  Or love?  I'd like more of both, please.