“Love flies, runs and rejoices; it is free and nothing can hold it back.”Thomas à Kempis · Imitațiunea lui Cristos · 1418 · cartea III, capitolul 5
Love adds no wings; it removes the weight: whoever has nothing to defend flies.
In à Kempis's vision, fear and calculation paralyze the soul, while love unbinds it. The mechanism is paradoxical: by surrendering the self, a person gains mobility. Whoever has nothing to defend need not stand guard; whoever does not fear loss is not rooted to the spot. Someone who loves their work moves with a lightness that no one working merely for a wage can fake. That ease is not shallowness but the absence of the ego's weight.
Fear works like a brake you don't feel, but pay for constantly. Whoever works only to avoid losing something spends their energy on defense, not on moving forward. Love reverses the direction of effort: you no longer run away from something, you run toward it. Watch someone cooking for a person they love. They move fast, make mistakes, laugh, adjust. Someone cooking only out of duty hesitates at every step, afraid of getting it wrong. The difference isn't talent, but the direction of the soul. À Kempis sees here a law of inner life: what holds you in place isn't the weight of the road, but the weight of what you're trying to protect. And the next question is simple: how do you recognize, in your own day, whether you move from love or from fear?
Why it matters Relevant for anyone who feels stuck in fear — of failure, of others' judgment, of loss. The line offers a test: if you move heavily, perhaps you no longer love what you do.