This week has been a week of decisions. I needed to vote (early ballot), choose a retirement fund, and pick out things to throw away in our move to a smaller office. Decisions are always stressful to me, and Ifear and uncertainty came up. Anger came up too as I tried to push away the pressure. What didn’t come up was love.

I didn’t choose first out of love, and I tried to find something to fight against instead of embracing everything. I didn’t love both candidates (or hate them either) and I didn’t love the person trying to get me to invest more money for things I didn’t want to invest in.

But I realized today that love should always be my first response if I really want to create and embody it, especially if I want to make more of it alive in this world. I need to trust that if I choose love, I’ll be OK, instead of letting my existential fear of not surviving ruling my thoughts and emotions. Will the country be OK, will the new office be OK without the things we’re taking, will people be angry with me if I make certain choices? I don’t know, so I guess that’s why it was hard to choose love instead of fear. However, they are flip sides of the same energy, like yin and yang. So wherever there is fear, there is also love in a sense.

If I can’t make that choice when times get tough, then everything I say are empty, meaningless words. What do I want my life to mean? What do I want it to be about? I already decided that much, so now I need to live it and keep choosing it in my daily choices—starting with loving myself.