"Fear and love are contradictory terms. Love is reckless in giving away, oblivious as to what it gets in return. Love wrestles with the world as with itself and ultimately gains a mastery over all other feelings." - 'From S.S. Rajputana-III' (Letter from M.D.)*, Young India, 1 Oct. 1931 (from The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi edited by Raghavan Iyer)
Fear, I understand. I am a very fearful person and have always been so from my earliest memories. My father used to tell me that there was nothing to be afraid of. This did not help. It only made me feel bad about myself for being weak.
Today, I still have many fears. I fear financial insecurity, even though I have more than enough money. I fear old age and poor health. I fear losing my wife. I fear losing my daughters, biological and foster. I fear strangers. The list goes on and on.
But I have also begun to learn love. I started to learn in my late teens when I decided that for me the most important thing in the universe were children. Much of my adult life has been spent sharing my life with children. This brings me great joy and great sorrow, but mostly great love. I don't know that I have helped any of them, but I know that they have helped me.
It was this love that brought me to non-violence. It takes but a glance at history to see that the greatest victims of violence and greed have always been children. Followed closely, I might add, by the victimization of women.
A world of non-violence, a world of love, would be a world where the least among us would be raised up as the most important and most valued.
* Mahadev Desai published the above extract from a discours given by Gandhi at the evening prayer, during his voyage to London.
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