Love Falls Downhill

I used to have a big problem. I used to be scary.

People told me this to my face — students, staff, people I cared about. “I’m scared of you.” And I could never understand it. Why? I wasn’t scary inside. I had nothing but love for the people around me. I respected them, cared for them, tried to take care of them the best way I knew how.

And besides — if you’re scared of me, why keep coming back? Why hang around? I spent years thinking, “It can’t be me. It must be them.”

But no. It was me.

We’ve been taught that authority must carry fear. That love, respect, loyalty — all of it has to come with a little intimidation.

Fear the teacher. Fear the boss. Fear your parents. Fear God.

But that’s horseshit and we all know it. Pick up any psychology textbook or a leadership training manual — centuries of human behaviour laid out in black and white — and you’ll see how wrong we’ve been. Fear doesn’t help people grow. Fear makes you anxious. It makes you defensive. It makes you small. It puts you in a box and tells you not to move.

So it wasn’t them. It was me.

If I want to lead — if I want people to follow — it has to start with me. It starts with a smile and a hello. It starts with gentleness. With presence. With remembering that love flows downward, not up.

You love the people you have authority over more than they love you. That’s not a failure. It’s the design. Every good parent knows this. You give love and you get attitude back. You counter with more love, more patience, more understanding. And eventually respect, loyalty, and love trickle back up. But it’s always slower on the climb.

Downhill? It’s natural. It’s gravity.

So I stopped pulling love toward me. I let it fall. I smile when I see you. I ask, “How was your day?” I say, “Can I get you anything?” I remember your coffee order — cream and two sugars, right?

If you want to love someone, find out how they take their coffee.

And when I want to razz my wife, I ask her how she takes hers. She starts cussing me out in Polish. I have to admit — it turns me on.

Leadership should never be scary. Some countries figured this out already. In Denmark, for example, the government uses soft, helpful language when they send you a letter — even if it’s about your taxes. They talk to you like they work for you, because they do.

But here? We get threats. Deadlines. Penalties bolded in red ink. Nobody likes getting a letter from the CRA or the IRS, no matter how mundane. Our systems still think fear is an effective motivator. It’s not. Fear makes people avoid you, hide from you, lie to you.

And when you hold leadership, it’s your job to learn from the people you lead — the people you lean on. They offer perspectives you don’t have. They’re closer to the fight. They bring nuances you didn’t consider because age comes for us all. We get stuck in the past and in our own stubborn ways. We think we know best because we’re detached, looking at everything from our vantage point, our own point of view. And the ones who shouldn’t, stumble with their words — afraid to tell us what’s what — just because our egos are too big and we hold too much power.

Fuck power.

Power wants to control, and control is not guidance. It’s not leadership. It’s authority — swinging your dick because you can, not because you need to or because it’s necessary.

When you radiate kindness, authority becomes inevitable. People gravitate to places where they feel safe — places where fear has no place at all. Safety lets people let their guard down. It lets them think. Create. Experiment. Make mistakes. In short, it lets them grow.

Good parents know this. They don’t punish their kids just to prove a point — they guide them, show them the error of their ways, help them understand. You call it “soft,” but that’s only because you’ve never seen love used the way it was intended.

Real authority isn’t about fear. It’s about safety. It’s about kindness. It’s about creating a world where people can breathe — and because they can breathe, they follow.