- Trish Heitz
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
I was listening to a song recently when a lyric caught my attention:
"Love will never die."
The words stayed with me long after the song ended.
At first, I thought about love the way most of us do, as something we feel for another person. A relationship. An emotion. A connection between hearts. But the more I reflected on it, the more I realized something profound:
How could love ever die if love is who we authentically are?
Perhaps the real journey of life is not finding love at all. Perhaps it is coming home to it. Coming home to the part of ourselves that existed before fear, disappointment, rejection, stress, and survival became our default way of experiencing the world.
Because if love is our authentic nature, then maybe the goal was never to search for it. Maybe the goal was simply to remember it.
Every human being spends their life wrestling with love. We search for romantic love, seek acceptance from our families, long for deeper friendships, and strive for approval. We work toward success hoping it will somehow make us feel more worthy, more valued, more loved. And perhaps the greatest struggle of all is learning how to love ourselves.
Yet what if there is a profound misunderstanding at the center of all this searching?
What if we spend our lives looking for something that was never missing?
What if love is not something we have to earn, achieve, prove, or find?
What if love is who we already are?
This reflection reminded me about Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She spends her entire journey searching for something she believes she has to "get to"... somewhere else, only to discover that what she was seeking had been with her all along.
How many of us are doing the same thing?
Searching outside ourselves for the love, worthiness, safety, acceptance, and belonging that already exist within us. Spending years looking for a home we never actually left.
Perhaps the reason so many people struggle is not because they are incapable of love. Perhaps it is because no one ever taught them that love was their original nature. Instead, we were taught to seek it, earn it, prove it, protect it, fight for it, and hold onto it.
And over time, fear became louder than love.
Not because fear is stronger.
But because fear speaks automatically, which is always does....
This is not weakness. This is human physiology.
The human brain has an incredible built-in survival system. Its primary job is not happiness; its primary job is survival. To accomplish that task, the brain constantly scans for danger, potential threats, worst-case scenarios, things that might hurt us, and things that might go wrong...which means we are always in survival mode!
This negativity bias once helped keep our ancestors alive. But in modern life, it often becomes the lens through which we experience the world. The fear response becomes automatic. The stress response becomes automatic. The protective response becomes automatic.
And becausae we don't realize it, we now no longer living from possibility.
We are living in protection.
Within the Mindology™ | Mind-Body Intelligence, program, I teach that stress is not simply a mental experience. It is a physiological one. When the brain perceives danger, the body responds immediately. Stress hormones are released. The nervous system shifts into survival mode. The body prepares to fight, flee, freeze, or protect.
While that response is incredibly useful during genuine danger, most of us unknowingly live there most of our lives.
The challenge is that while fear is automatic, love is intentional.
The brain automatically searches for danger. It does not automatically search for possibility. It automatically notices problems. It does not automatically notice opportunities. It automatically protects. It does not automatically expand.
That part requires awareness.
That part requires practice.
That part requires choice.
And perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons of being human...not learning how to eliminate fear, but learning how to choose something greater than fear.
Fear contracts.
Love expands.
Fear narrows our focus.
Love broadens our perspective.
Fear keeps us surviving.
Love helps us thrive.
This does not mean life becomes easy. In fact, one of the most powerful realizations I have had is this:
What if the difficult seasons of life are not evidence that love has abandoned us?
What if they are actually part of love's process?
Nearly every form of forward movement begins with a backward pull. A slingshot must be pulled backward before it launches forward. A bow must be drawn back before the arrow can fly. Even nature follows this pattern. Seeds disappear into darkness before they emerge into the light.
The part we resist is the contraction.
The setback.
The disappointment.
The heartbreak.
The uncertainty.
The season where it feels like life is moving backward instead of forward.
But perhaps contraction is not punishment.
Perhaps contraction is preparation.
Because contraction creates momentum, and momentum creates movement.
The challenge is that when we are in the middle of a difficult season, our stress response often convinces us that something has gone wrong and it may possibly be permanent. We assume we are failing. We assume we are stuck. We assume our lives are moving backward.
But what if the contraction is not the end of the story?
What if it is simply preparing you for expansion?
What if the setback at work is developing skills you will need later? What if the financial challenge is strengthening resilience and resourcefulness? What if the relationship ending is creating space for deeper alignment or a better relationship on its way. What if the uncertainty is preparing you for a version of yourself that has not fully emerged yet?
We often want growth without discomfort, expansion without contraction, and thriving without challenge.
But life rarely works that way.
The very experiences we resist often become the source of our greatest growth...not because pain itself is good, but because growth often emerges through what pain teaches us.
Within Mindology™ | Mind-Body Intelligence, I often encourage people to pause and ask a simple question when facing a challenge:
Am I responding from fear or from love?
Fear sounds like:
What if I fail?
What if they reject me?
What if I'm not enough?
What if I lose?
What if I make the wrong decision?
Love sounds like:
What if this is helping me grow?
What if I can trust myself through this?
What if there is an opportunity I cannot see yet?
What if this challenge is preparing me for something greater?
What if I am stronger than I realize?
The circumstances may not change immediately, but the energy from which we respond changes everything.
Fear seeks certainty.
Love embraces possibility.
Fear asks, "How do I protect myself?"
Love asks, "How do I continue becoming who I was meant to be?"
Perhaps that is why love never dies.
Not because life never hurts.
Not because we never experience fear.
Not because we never lose our way.
But because beneath every disappointment, every setback, every heartbreak, and every season of uncertainty, there remains something within us that continues to seek connection, growth, purpose, meaning, and possibility.
That something is love.
It was there before the fear.
It remains beneath the fear.
And it will still be there long after the fear has passed.
Perhaps personal growth is not about becoming someone new. Perhaps it is about remembering who we were before fear became the loudest voice in the room. Perhaps it is about coming home to the openness, curiosity, connection, trust, and possibility that have always existed beneath our protective layers.
Not abandoning fear.
Not pretending fear doesn't exist.
But recognizing that fear was never meant to become our permanent home.
The stress response is a survival state.
Love is a thriving state.
And every day we are given opportunities to choose which one will guide our next step.
Not perfectly.
Not all at once.
But intentionally.
Because the fear response may be automatic.
But the love response can be practiced.
And over time, what we practice becomes our new default.
Perhaps the real work is teaching the mind and body that safety is possible. Teaching ourselves to trust again. Teaching ourselves to expand again. Teaching ourselves to live from possibility again.
Because perhaps love never leaves us.
It simply waits beneath our protective layers until we feel safe enough to experience it again.
And perhaps the journey of life is not about becoming someone new.
It is not about finding love.
It is about reconnecting with the love that fear taught us to forget.
Because beneath every protective layer, beneath every disappointment, beneath every heartbreak, and beneath every fear...
love is still there.
Waiting patiently for us to come home.
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