There was a question on X: would you rather be feared or loved? Both emotions towards you are somewhat passive—you are the “receiver” in both cases—but fear can make people do way more things than love, so most people choose fear. I chose love. Let’s dive in. My main reasoning is: you CAN make people fear you, but you can’t make them love you. So, given the chance, I would rather pick one opportunity and be loved.

Actually, when I started thinking, you can make people hate you, you can make people disgusted by you, you can make them feel every single emotion you want them to feel—except love. They either love you or they don’t. I mean, there are “levels” of love and types of love for sure, but no one will ever love you for something you did. That’s my experience. I did wonderful things for some people—I was dedicated, tried to help them, gave them a lot, and then some. Most of them didn’t love me. Some respected me, enjoyed the attention or utility they got from me—but no one loved me.

Yet some random people I didn’t want anything to do with loved me. I never did anything for them. And when it comes to all other emotions—I made people hate me, I made people fear me, or even darker—I made people pity me.

So why is love so attractive? Everyone wants to be loved, let’s be real, and there isn’t a formula for love unlike other emotions. I think love is so attractive BECAUSE you can’t make people feel it. It’s not attainable—it’s a gift. Fear, on the other hand, is attainable. If someone loves you, they will love you when you are down. However, if someone fears you because of your power—they will stop fearing you if the power is gone. Love is actually the only emotion that is connected to you as a human being (someone who is), not to you as a human doing (someone who does).

The irony is, love is the reason for most of our suffering. Love is kind of selfish. When we love someone, our initial instinct is to be loved back. We are part of an egotistical society; it’s so ego-crushing not to be loved back by the person you love. “I feel this towards you, so you should feel the same towards me!” We want love to be reciprocal. However, it rarely is. Over the years of my personal development, I always had this idea in the back of my mind: if I love someone, do they really have to love me back? My ego said yes, and that hurt me a lot. However, as I grew older, I started enjoying loving. It’s an OKAY feeling at best. You love someone, they don’t love you back—that’s okay. Acceptable, as long as I don’t feel really bad, like a worthless piece of garbage, because of it. I used to—now I don’t.

I think that’s the end goal when it comes to maturity: being okay with not being loved back. Or, as modern culture would say—“simping.” However, I don’t agree. You can love with boundaries. It goes something like this: “I feel this about you, but I’m not going to allow it to influence my life if you don’t feel the same about me.” You are putting boundaries on yourself. You train yourself to be better.

Love and power? Every sane person notices that love brings a certain amount of power. I decided to delete my Instagram and TikTok apps (not accounts) because of the massive amount of nonsense on my feeds about power plays in love. “Why men like this, what women respect, what they don’t respect”—all of that circles back to the same crap: immature love, where people love the “idea of a person” instead of the “real person.” There are long conversations about communication via apps, and then people come up with ideas: “You should delay responses. You shouldn’t give too much attention. They will lose respect.” My best friend (female) told me a simple truth: “We all did that, but that’s moronic. Write when you wanna write, respond when you want to respond.” If you want to write to someone all day, that’s okay. IF they respond—even better. If they don’t respond, that’s okay too. Playing hunger-predator games is for morons.

And, the final part about love: if you love someone who does not love you back—someone is in the wrong there (or both of you are). Sometimes, we don’t know what we need or what we would love if we could overcome our egos and personas. A lot of people love their own imagination of a person, but they don’t know the real person. We are suffering because of it.

Sometimes, the best cure for love is to really meet someone, and then you will see beyond the illusion. The same goes for self-love. If you don’t love yourself, maybe you should meet your real self.

Cheers.