I have come to understand I have hated myself for almost forty years. I have been exploring anger, guilt, shame, and hope, but the more I tried to know what they are and what to do with them, I felt I was missing something important. Hope is the mechanism for meaning, but more than that hope is the ability to trust the process for positive change. Hope is different than faith because faith is the belief in a specific outcome, a conclusion, but not the process to get there. If we hold hate in our hearts, we will never be able to hope with consistency. While hope gives us a conduit for positive change, hatred is the inverse. Hatred is the understanding that something is wrong and we cannot fix it.
From where does hatred come? Commonly, we see hatred as deep-seated anger. Anger is the emotion providing us energy to protect something important. What happens when anger has no resolution? What happens when the important cannot be adequately protected? The anger, having no avenue for release, corrodes us down into a state of hatred. We lose hope and become reactive beings with no belief in a positive outcome. Our hatred, if continuously fed, wears us down until we have little energy left to spend. We become depressed, apathetic, and dismissive.
Why did I hate myself? I was unable to impact what I viewed as necessary. Whether we are talking about family dynamics, structural injustices like racism, sexism, xenophobia, wealth inequality, the rise of authoritarianism, or my efforts to keep people alive in a combat zone, I saw failure after failure. I gave up on life after returning to the USA and threw away the bulk of my assets, as I knew I would die soon. When I survived, I hated myself even more for failing to end it all. For years, I simmered in my anger as I was powerless to change the reality I understood. I refused to accept my limitations and focused on all the wrongs of the world around me. I simultaneously wanted to be a part of the solution but believed such was impossible. It is only recently that I realized so much of what I wanted to change was never in my control to start. For example, I can remain intolerant of racism, but I cannot single-handedly resolve the crisis of white supremacy. Attachment is the root of suffering, and hatred refuses to let us detach.
Hatred forces us to live for yesterday, not today or tomorrow. Hatred causes us to become stuck at a point in time increasingly separated from the present as each moment passes. We may want to return to that moment in order to change it. We could be actively trying to find atonement for that moment in the present, but I think many of us understand such is impossible. The dead can’t be brought back; the words can’t be un-said; the past cannot be changed. Atonement is the wrong focus because it continues the cycle of attachment and suffering. We have to live for those still alive, those still fighting to make today better than yesterday. It is imperative we remember the past to make the positive changes we yearn for so intensely.
Hatred is a judgment and removes our ability to be present in the moment. We judge ourselves unworthy, unable, to improve and become trapped in our thoughts. Being stuck in our minds means we aren’t here and now. Not being present means we continuously re-live the past, re-traumatizing ourselves and stirring more anger. The anger we feel will have no resolution because we cannot change the past. The anger becomes more fuel for hatred but lacks a target we can impact. We can break this cycle by being non-judgmental.
The past happened. We don’t have to forget it happened, nor do we need to be happy about the dark times. However, we don’t have to keep re-litigating the past hoping for a different outcome. The cessation of self-judgment is ok. We aren’t bad or wrong in the present due to an event that is done and finished. We can stop hating ourselves for things beyond our control. It is ok to learn from the past and let it go. We can become hopeful once more, armed with understanding what we’ve learned. Hope doesn’t give us the positive outcome itself, but it enables the journey to get there. Hatred robs us of the ability to move forward. Let go of the hate; you are worthy.
Be present, not perfect. Hatred is insidious because it doesn’t require the explosive rage we see in movies or people having terrible days. Hate can be developed by people feeding you a false narrative and convincing you that you are powerless to change it. Hate removes our ability to trust ourselves because we fall into a sunk cost fallacy trap. Nothing has changed; therefore, nothing will change, and we shouldn’t bother trying. This is, of course, incorrect. As long as we are alive, we are capable of changing. We don’t need to see the finish line to start the path to get there. All we need is a little hope to take meaningful steps in the right direction. Hatred was not developed overnight, and it will not vanish by one positive instance. We can practice being non-judgmental and make efforts to demonstrate change. We can then use those results as fuel for hope over hatred and develop a positive feedback loop rather than focusing on the past. We can convert hatred to hope little by little with each step down our journey. Time is limited; get busy.
~Monk Anchorwind | 19 December 2021.
Author’s Note : Hatred manifests itself uniquely in all of us. We could eat poorly and fail to take care of ourselves due to our ability to fix the past. We could practice continuous escapism through work or some other activity that keeps us from being present in the moment. Anything where we judge ourselves incapable of a better tomorrow could be a result of the hatred we’ve held on to for so long. Simply accepting positive change is possible is already a huge step forward. That acceptance is hope in action, and opens up a door for us to travel through. How we walk the path beyond the door is up to us, but what is important is the journey itself. We can do better.