Hatred

Hatred is a cancer that eats you from inside. More like a fire that consumes what it burns but merely heats what is outside of it. If you think that your hatred or your anger punishes someone else, then you are blind to how much it is consuming you, warping you, destroying you. If you hate someone and the person doesn’t know it, how are they affected? Perhaps they detect a distance between you, perhaps a coldness. But it’s like a fire within you that they cannot feel. And if they do know that you hate them? Then they are merely observers around the fire, feeling its warmth, its heat, but not being consumed. Not like you are. Fire will turn wood to ash, into something dead. Fire will warp metal until its original purpose is not longer known, until it is twisted and misshapen, and that’s what anger and hatred will do to you. The person you hate merely feels the effects of the hatred, like a person sitting near a fire feels its warmth. But you are like the wood, the kindling, the paper that started the fire. You are being consumed and destroyed by the anger and hatred. You are worth more than that.

But it is easy to say the words “stop hating”. It’s something else entirely to actually do it.

You can start with distraction. The more time and energy you put into your hatred – through brooding or venting or acting out – the more you feed the fire within you, the more of yourself you put into the flames to become destroyed. You have a limited amount of time on this earth. Do not waste it on this hatred. Distract yourself from it. Find something you can be passionate about. You are a passionate person. Hate and anger are passionate emotions. Take your passion and apply it to something else. It may take you a while, and it may be that this something will distract you only momentarily, but that’s better than nothing. You keep at it, over and over again. Bit by bit, you take back your time from the hatred, from the anger, in little bits at a time. You take back your heart and your passion and your mind away from the things that are crippling you. You put them to more sustaining, giving things. In time, you will hate less and you will be angry less. It may take you a long while. Perhaps the first thing you try is not something that will help. Perhaps ballroom dancing or working on cars or working in the garden or volunteering at the hospital does not distract your mind or your heart. Then try something else. You are a passionate person. There is something else out there in the world that you can be passionate about.

This is for hatred and anger over things you can do nothing, or at least nothing moral. But if you’re in a horrendous situation, get out. Put your passion and time into creating a life that does not include whatever it is that is destroying you. If you are living with someone who abuses you, and you are angry over that, get out first. If you lived with someone who abused you and that was ten years ago and you haven’t seen that person since nor will you, and you’re still angry, then you need to figure out a way to put your passion into something else, something worth your time.

You are worth your time. If you are in a bad situation, put your passion into getting out. If you are in a great situation but cannot get over the past, distract yourself, perhaps get therapy, perhaps enter a sweat lodge or go on a retreat to recenter yourself and purge yourself. But you are worth more than hatred and anger will ever give you. You are an amazing person, and you deserve better. Hatred and anger are abusers, and they are abusing you. Throw them out of your life. You deserve a life of peace and positive passion.