The Road Less Traveled
    A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
M. Scott Peck, M.D.

The Risk of Loss

- Work of Love vs. Courage of Love.  Now look at courage of love
- Doing things differently is frightening
- Courage
    - Not the absence of fear
    - Making action in spite of fear
    - Moving out against resistance
- Love requires cathexis for a beginning
    - We only come to love something that is important to us to begin with
- Pain of cathexis
    - With cathexis is the risk of loss or rejection
    - Price of cathexis is pain
    - Growing in any dimension: you'll receive pain as well as joy
- Avoiding suffering
    - Attempt to avoid legitimate suffering lies at root of all emotional illness
    - If we learn to live with the fact that death is always a companion, then death can become an ally.      . Knowledge of death helps put life into perspective?
    - When we shy away from death (nature of things), we shy away from life

In order to love, we need to first cathect (invest energy into) something.   When we do this, we risk losing it.  However, the only way to fully experience life is to understand and accept the possibility of loss and death.