Love opens you up to be vulnerable. It allows the possibility of rejection, which we are hardwired to fear. I mean that literally. Michael from the Vsauce YouTube channel has a great video titled "What Is The Scariest Thing?", and in that he explains that humans have what's called 'Innate Aversions' and all fears can be traced back to these core concepts. Rejection connects to the innate aversion to isolation because humans are social animals. -Byron
Many fear love because they are afraid of getting hurt. Loving someone also means letting them in which in turn gives them an opportunity to hurt you. While this may be true if we run from love were only hurting ourselves. Love is something we all want and need and if we don’t have it can we be truly happy? I feel like this quote is very right because if we close ourselves off from love were also closing ourselves off from other people and great opportunities. If we live our lives in fear we’re not really living.
I find that the reason most people fear love is because people don't like to let their guard down. It can be hard. Especially if they've been hurt in the past by someone in a relationship, whether thats with a partner, parent, or friend. By loving someone it helps you learn how to live. If we are afraid to love how are we supposed to get to know people? It would be pretty hard to meet new people and not eventually love them. If we are afraid to love we are essentially afraid to live, because how would we really live if we can't love?
Someone may fear love because it is hard to let people in just for them to hurt you. Some may fear it because they have been hurt so many times by others that they just want to be left alone and closed off from the world of love. Love is easy to fear when the only love you have experienced hurt you so badly.
I agree with you completely, Alexus. I think people always have a guard up, but even more so if they have bad past experiences with love. It can be so much easier to close off than put yourself out there. Doing so is a form of protection from the outside (love).
I think it's natural to fear love, but it's important to overcome that fear, because love is such a big part of our lives. I don't know if it's possible to live and not feel love for anyone or anything. On page 21 Nora thinks,"Happy moments can turn into pain, given time." I think this thought is a big fear when it comes to love; todays joys being tomorrows sadness. -Jenna Whitehead
Love is a natural thing we all experience in different ways in life, maybe from our parents, siblings, pets, significant others, and specific places/things as well. With this many ways to love, there are also just that many ways to be hurt, which can definitely make someone fear love. Hurt is also something we all inevitably experience, and it can sometimes be something that ruins our perception on how love is supposed to be. That is a scary thought because love is always supposed to be a beautiful thing. With that being said, no one wants to be hurt, but there are some situations where it is necessary to overcome that fear of love because it can hold you back from life-changing opportunities. I really do not know how we would go through our lives without loving and still have an enjoyable life. Carly Hendrickson
I think Bertrand Russell is correct in his quote about love and life. What is life without love? I think life without love is empty and meaningless. To enjoy life you need friends and loved ones to experience it with. If a person has nobody close to them in life, then they aren’t living life to the fullest. Going through life alone is sad and lonely. We need people we love with us for life to be complete.
I think some people fear love because it puts them in a vulnerable position, and some people hate feeling vulnerable. Loving someone requires letting your walls down and letting the other person see who you truly are. It’s a possibility that after that a person could leave. That’s a very deep and real kind of pain. There’s also a chance that you let your walls down, and that person is taken from you. If a person loves someone, most likely they will eventually feel pain from it. It maybe years and years down the line but eventually it will come. Some people want to avoid this pain because they have experienced it before in a break-up or a death of a loved one. Despite all this, we still need love in our lives. There’s a famous quote that sums this up perfectly, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Love is a gateway inside of people's lives. If you are to love someone and they stab you in your back it creates a deeper wound than if it was someone random. When you love someone, you put all your trust into them to where you think they are going to do what is best for you and them. It creates a huge sense of vulnerability. When people a hurt so many times by love, it adds bricks to a near indestructable wall. By closing ourselves off; we limit who we interact with, the oppotunities we take, and ultimately, the people we trust.
Bertrand Russell is saying that love is such an integral part of life that you are not really living if you have no love. Most of the time someone is afraid of love when something they loved got taken away from them, like a relative dying or a failed relationship. It can leave a person feeling empty and sad, so they may choose to refrain from love altogether to avoid feeling the same way. - Matt Pittman
There is a heaviness to this question because I believe our flesh is meant to love and be loved. When you fear love whether that is from past hurt and pain or you fear love because you feel you don't deserve it, regardless when our hearts don't feel or have love in them, we begin to diminish our purpose. The reason a majority of people chose a specific occupation is because you love it. The reason you spend your time doing certain things often is because you love doing them. You spend time with the people you love. Our humanly desire again is to love and be loved. A fear of love causes a fear of life because you strip so much opportunity from yourself. I think Bertrand is emphasizing how vital love is to our survival in this world. I mean the core reason suicide is a thing is because of the lack of love felt and expressed, when you feel no love and don't want to love, you strip yourself from what seems to be our soul's water. Without it, after a period of time, you can't survive. Like I expressed at the beginning, people fear love because of the past and what it's damaged in their hearts. It's unfortunate how common it actually is so fear love and the power it holds. Not just romantically but through family and friendships. This book through Nora's story showed the power love has when it's missing from someone's life.
I think there are many reasons a person may “fear” love. Perhaps they have not been shown true, proper love in their lifetime and have a misconstrued idea of what love is. Maybe they have been shown a good love, but then the one who loved them or who they loved let them down, so now they are wary of giving/receiving that love again. One of the hardest things in this life is being vulnerable, which is one thing you need to be to experience love, both receiving and giving. Another possibility is that they are afraid that their love would be inadequate, that their love could never be enough for the person/people they care for. There are so many reasons one may have to fear love, which is sad considering it is the basis of the human experience; to love and be loved.
I think this quote means that when you are scared of love, it conflicts with everything included in a life because a life is full of love. One could say that is all life consists of. If not this, it is what we as people look forward to in every day we live. This does not have to be loving another person, romantically or as a friend. For example, we all have our favorite foods, favorite celebrities, and favorite music. The list goes on and on, but the point is that we all carry a love for certain things. This love is what creates excitement for the new days ahead of us, it is what drives us. Without this love, it would be very difficult to be happy or excited to be alive. I think the second half of the quote means that by fearing love, you are fearing life because love is abundant in life as we know it. This, in turn, would qualify you as dead many times over. Fearing the very thing that holds our lives together would be suicidal. By fearing these things, it would become very hard to live, if not impossible. I believe that someone may fear love because they are afraid of the outcome. Some people get so scared of the things that may happen they never get to experience the great things waiting in store if they just made an attempt. This can be seen in many different aspects. Romantically with a significant other and mentally with infatuations or obsessions. Some people I think are also just so accustomed to their normal nature of negativity that they never make it out of their bubble to experience the joy that is available.
I believe that Bertrand Russell was referring to a person's spirit rather than their body. "Three parts" typically means "three quarters." This means that what Russell was saying was that love composes seventy-five percent of an individual's life. People who fear love avoid it, meaning they avoid seventy-five percent of life. This in turn means they are "three parts dead." I think love is something like, the sacrifice of oneself (oneself being a composition of one's time, money, convenience, etc.) for the benefit of others. As other students mentioned, this makes an individual vulnerable. It takes courage to be vulnerable. So why show love? For one, you will be more courageous. It is also quite appealing when you are shown love, and people find it much easier to love a lovable person.
I think that people who are afraid to live and love are dead, in a sense. They refuse to live because of the pains that might come from it, but they end up refusing the joys of life at the same time. No one has ever lives a painless life, but the pain makes all the joys of life that much better.
People fear love for many reasons. Some may have a hard time committing to someone, others may be scared it is not what they might think it is. Most people do not like the unknown and taking chances. These are all reasons someone could fear love. This is, if we are assuming the he is only talking about loving a person. You can live life and not love another person, but still have plenty of love. Loving another person can be apart of life, but it does not mean you are three parts dead. There are other ways to spread love throughout yourself and other people. Loving the life you build is a good example as you are the only person that will see your life from start to finish and will be guaranteed to be there. Filling your self with hate and spreading that however is where I can see someone becoming three parts dead as they have nothing better to do than spread negativity. - Cody Miller
I think this is a fantastic quote. For me personally, love is an exceptionally important part of the human condition. Loving people and things brings great joy to myself, it is something that I would wish my fiercest enemy to be without. I think the main reason for fearing love is the loss of control. When you love something, especially someone, you impart a piece of yourself to them. By giving a bit of yourself to that person; you gain weakness but more importantly you lose control. Loving something, be it a friend or something more, is a very tenuous thing to be apart of. And for many people losing that control of self is terrifying. -CWR
Life, for the majority of people, is mostly made up of mundane chores. But in between brushing your teeth or taking out the trash or writing assignments or going to work, we have passions, and these things we love are what define our conceptions of the lives we live and the people we are. They're what we remember. So if you're afraid to chase passion and love something, you might be getting up to engage in routine, but you're not living. You're surviving as a corpse, you can't define yourself by things for which you have no passion, and in that way fearing love makes you fear what makes you the person you are.
I believe the quote is saying that love is the meaning of life, and fearing love is fearing life as well. If you fear life, then you aren't truly living. Someone might fear love because they are scared to create a close bond with another person. Maybe they are afraid that if they love someone, they could lose them. Or maybe they are afraid that the person they love won't feel the same way and will reject them. But if you let these fears hold you down and prevent you from pursuing love, you are living your life as a dead man.
Love opens you up to be vulnerable. It allows the possibility of rejection, which we are hardwired to fear. I mean that literally. Michael from the Vsauce YouTube channel has a great video titled "What Is The Scariest Thing?", and in that he explains that humans have what's called 'Innate Aversions' and all fears can be traced back to these core concepts. Rejection connects to the innate aversion to isolation because humans are social animals.
ReplyDelete-Byron
^^^^^ -Jolee McIntyre
DeleteMany fear love because they are afraid of getting hurt. Loving someone also means letting them in which in turn gives them an opportunity to hurt you. While this may be true if we run from love were only hurting ourselves. Love is something we all want and need and if we don’t have it can we be truly happy? I feel like this quote is very right because if we close ourselves off from love were also closing ourselves off from other people and great opportunities. If we live our lives in fear we’re not really living.
ReplyDeleteI find that the reason most people fear love is because people don't like to let their guard down. It can be hard. Especially if they've been hurt in the past by someone in a relationship, whether thats with a partner, parent, or friend. By loving someone it helps you learn how to live. If we are afraid to love how are we supposed to get to know people? It would be pretty hard to meet new people and not eventually love them. If we are afraid to love we are essentially afraid to live, because how would we really live if we can't love?
ReplyDeleteSomeone may fear love because it is hard to let people in just for them to hurt you. Some may fear it because they have been hurt so many times by others that they just want to be left alone and closed off from the world of love. Love is easy to fear when the only love you have experienced hurt you so badly.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely, Alexus. I think people always have a guard up, but even more so if they have bad past experiences with love. It can be so much easier to close off than put yourself out there. Doing so is a form of protection from the outside (love).
Delete-Charlie Rogers
DeleteI think it's natural to fear love, but it's important to overcome that fear, because love is such a big part of our lives. I don't know if it's possible to live and not feel love for anyone or anything.
ReplyDeleteOn page 21 Nora thinks,"Happy moments can turn into pain, given time." I think this thought is a big fear when it comes to love; todays joys being tomorrows sadness.
-Jenna Whitehead
Love is a natural thing we all experience in different ways in life, maybe from our parents, siblings, pets, significant others, and specific places/things as well. With this many ways to love, there are also just that many ways to be hurt, which can definitely make someone fear love. Hurt is also something we all inevitably experience, and it can sometimes be something that ruins our perception on how love is supposed to be. That is a scary thought because love is always supposed to be a beautiful thing. With that being said, no one wants to be hurt, but there are some situations where it is necessary to overcome that fear of love because it can hold you back from life-changing opportunities. I really do not know how we would go through our lives without loving and still have an enjoyable life.
ReplyDeleteCarly Hendrickson
I think Bertrand Russell is correct in his quote about love and life. What is life without love? I think life without love is empty and meaningless. To enjoy life you need friends and loved ones to experience it with. If a person has nobody close to them in life, then they aren’t living life to the fullest. Going through life alone is sad and lonely. We need people we love with us for life to be complete.
ReplyDeleteI think some people fear love because it puts them in a vulnerable position, and some people hate feeling vulnerable. Loving someone requires letting your walls down and letting the other person see who you truly are. It’s a possibility that after that a person could leave. That’s a very deep and real kind of pain. There’s also a chance that you let your walls down, and that person is taken from you. If a person loves someone, most likely they will eventually feel pain from it. It maybe years and years down the line but eventually it will come. Some people want to avoid this pain because they have experienced it before in a break-up or a death of a loved one. Despite all this, we still need love in our lives. There’s a famous quote that sums this up perfectly, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Love is a gateway inside of people's lives. If you are to love someone and they stab you in your back it creates a deeper wound than if it was someone random. When you love someone, you put all your trust into them to where you think they are going to do what is best for you and them. It creates a huge sense of vulnerability. When people a hurt so many times by love, it adds bricks to a near indestructable wall. By closing ourselves off; we limit who we interact with, the oppotunities we take, and ultimately, the people we trust.
ReplyDeleteBertrand Russell is saying that love is such an integral part of life that you are not really living if you have no love. Most of the time someone is afraid of love when something they loved got taken away from them, like a relative dying or a failed relationship. It can leave a person feeling empty and sad, so they may choose to refrain from love altogether to avoid feeling the same way. - Matt Pittman
ReplyDeleteThere is a heaviness to this question because I believe our flesh is meant to love and be loved. When you fear love whether that is from past hurt and pain or you fear love because you feel you don't deserve it, regardless when our hearts don't feel or have love in them, we begin to diminish our purpose. The reason a majority of people chose a specific occupation is because you love it. The reason you spend your time doing certain things often is because you love doing them. You spend time with the people you love. Our humanly desire again is to love and be loved. A fear of love causes a fear of life because you strip so much opportunity from yourself. I think Bertrand is emphasizing how vital love is to our survival in this world. I mean the core reason suicide is a thing is because of the lack of love felt and expressed, when you feel no love and don't want to love, you strip yourself from what seems to be our soul's water. Without it, after a period of time, you can't survive. Like I expressed at the beginning, people fear love because of the past and what it's damaged in their hearts. It's unfortunate how common it actually is so fear love and the power it holds. Not just romantically but through family and friendships. This book through Nora's story showed the power love has when it's missing from someone's life.
ReplyDeleteThis way Arely^
DeleteI think there are many reasons a person may “fear” love. Perhaps they have not been shown true, proper love in their lifetime and have a misconstrued idea of what love is. Maybe they have been shown a good love, but then the one who loved them or who they loved let them down, so now they are wary of giving/receiving that love again. One of the hardest things in this life is being vulnerable, which is one thing you need to be to experience love, both receiving and giving. Another possibility is that they are afraid that their love would be inadequate, that their love could never be enough for the person/people they care for. There are so many reasons one may have to fear love, which is sad considering it is the basis of the human experience; to love and be loved.
ReplyDeleteI think this quote means that when you are scared of love, it conflicts with everything included in a life because a life is full of love. One could say that is all life consists of. If not this, it is what we as people look forward to in every day we live. This does not have to be loving another person, romantically or as a friend. For example, we all have our favorite foods, favorite celebrities, and favorite music. The list goes on and on, but the point is that we all carry a love for certain things. This love is what creates excitement for the new days ahead of us, it is what drives us. Without this love, it would be very difficult to be happy or excited to be alive. I think the second half of the quote means that by fearing love, you are fearing life because love is abundant in life as we know it. This, in turn, would qualify you as dead many times over. Fearing the very thing that holds our lives together would be suicidal. By fearing these things, it would become very hard to live, if not impossible.
ReplyDeleteI believe that someone may fear love because they are afraid of the outcome. Some people get so scared of the things that may happen they never get to experience the great things waiting in store if they just made an attempt. This can be seen in many different aspects. Romantically with a significant other and mentally with infatuations or obsessions. Some people I think are also just so accustomed to their normal nature of negativity that they never make it out of their bubble to experience the joy that is available.
This is Charlie Rogers btw
DeleteI believe that Bertrand Russell was referring to a person's spirit rather than their body. "Three parts" typically means "three quarters." This means that what Russell was saying was that love composes seventy-five percent of an individual's life. People who fear love avoid it, meaning they avoid seventy-five percent of life. This in turn means they are "three parts dead."
ReplyDeleteI think love is something like, the sacrifice of oneself (oneself being a composition of one's time, money, convenience, etc.) for the benefit of others. As other students mentioned, this makes an individual vulnerable. It takes courage to be vulnerable. So why show love? For one, you will be more courageous. It is also quite appealing when you are shown love, and people find it much easier to love a lovable person.
I think that people who are afraid to live and love are dead, in a sense. They refuse to live because of the pains that might come from it, but they end up refusing the joys of life at the same time. No one has ever lives a painless life, but the pain makes all the joys of life that much better.
ReplyDeletePeople fear love for many reasons. Some may have a hard time committing to someone, others may be scared it is not what they might think it is. Most people do not like the unknown and taking chances. These are all reasons someone could fear love. This is, if we are assuming the he is only talking about loving a person. You can live life and not love another person, but still have plenty of love. Loving another person can be apart of life, but it does not mean you are three parts dead. There are other ways to spread love throughout yourself and other people. Loving the life you build is a good example as you are the only person that will see your life from start to finish and will be guaranteed to be there. Filling your self with hate and spreading that however is where I can see someone becoming three parts dead as they have nothing better to do than spread negativity. - Cody Miller
ReplyDeleteI think this is a fantastic quote. For me personally, love is an exceptionally important part of the human condition. Loving people and things brings great joy to myself, it is something that I would wish my fiercest enemy to be without.
ReplyDeleteI think the main reason for fearing love is the loss of control.
When you love something, especially someone, you impart a piece of yourself to them. By giving a bit of yourself to that person; you gain weakness but more importantly you lose control. Loving something, be it a friend or something more, is a very tenuous thing to be apart of. And for many people losing that control of self is terrifying.
-CWR
Life, for the majority of people, is mostly made up of mundane chores. But in between brushing your teeth or taking out the trash or writing assignments or going to work, we have passions, and these things we love are what define our conceptions of the lives we live and the people we are. They're what we remember. So if you're afraid to chase passion and love something, you might be getting up to engage in routine, but you're not living. You're surviving as a corpse, you can't define yourself by things for which you have no passion, and in that way fearing love makes you fear what makes you the person you are.
ReplyDeleteI believe the quote is saying that love is the meaning of life, and fearing love is fearing life as well. If you fear life, then you aren't truly living. Someone might fear love because they are scared to create a close bond with another person. Maybe they are afraid that if they love someone, they could lose them. Or maybe they are afraid that the person they love won't feel the same way and will reject them. But if you let these fears hold you down and prevent you from pursuing love, you are living your life as a dead man.
ReplyDelete