"It's better to be feared than loved," said the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. And in the space of a line she has gone from a one-dimensional villain to a three-dimensional character. Her actions, extreme and disparate as they may seem, have a unifying motivation - and a human one at that. Not in wanting to be feared, but in grappling for a hold on something other than love.
Because how do you hold onto love, that which has to be given freely? You can't force it, the way you can force fear. And so for many of us our grasp on love is tenuous at best, if not ever elusive. In the absence of love we turn to other things - security/comfort, power/fear, uniqueness/admiration. Pick your poison and run after it, because anything is better than running after love, losing it, and having to face the truth of being unloved and possibly unlovable.
I was no different in my adolescence, writing and traveling and loving the unassailable concepts of "the world" and "humankind". An introverted fortress of emotional fortitude, connecting to others by being of service to them. Instead of being loved I was interesting, self-sufficient yet selfless, unique. I didn't need love - I had other things.
Nevermind the energy it took to uphold all of that uniqueness - surely no one would have to energy to comprehend all of it, and isn't comprehension the prerequisite to meaningful love? So no one could love me even if they tried, and you see how quickly self-fulfilling prophecies build themselves up. And how that certainty can be so alluring as to be preferable to love.
Because love, like life, is uncertain. The ultimate risk. Hence the inexorable quest for something we can have control over, that we can shape, and build upon, and have represent us - tangible reminders of our actual worth. The people who cower from us, who favor and flatter us, who try to love us but ultimately fail - they are all just proof that we are special, that we are worthy, that we matter.
Except who are we convincing? And are we convinced? And would it have been worth it, after all, for love to have been written out of the question - before we even fall?