[21 May 2020]
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That really was one of the hardest parts. I couldn’t be mad at her. I didn’t want to be. And even when I tried, it was never real anger. It was just me lying to myself.
I think it’s harder to end a relationship without anger, because anger is probably the closest to love in terms of its effects on us. It can fill the void left behind, at least partially. But without it, you’re just empty.
I’m really intrigued by your comment about anger being the closest thing to love. Can you expound upon that?
I’ve thought a lot about this, and I’ll have to go through old notes to get it perfectly right.
But it’s kinda like the saying “two sides of the same coin.” Anger and love are birthed from the same base feeling, it’s just how you react to it.
It’s impossible to ignore either emotion. They make you act.
I guess the base emotion is inspiration. Something to drive you forward. Something that affects you at such a base level that denying them is equivalent to denying your existence.
Ah. Thats deep. I’ve never thought about it from that perspective, but it makes a TON of sense.
That’s also why I tell people not to hate people they don’t like. It’s better to just not care about them.
Feeling hate is saying that you care about them enough to devote your time and energy to them. And just like love, it must be expressed unless you want it to eat you from the inside. But unlike love, hate tends to be destructive to everyone involved. You can express it, but the best you can hope for is to feel the emptiness and dissatisfaction left by the expulsion of such a powerful emotion.
But it’s important to know that hate isn’t bad. We need hate as much as love, it’s just that we need to be more careful with it. We should save our hate for injustice, cruelty, evil. It still will leave a scar, but at least you can be proud of that scar. That scar means you stood for something that was important.
Another similarity between hate and love, is that they’re both self-propogating. Love leads to more love. Hate leads to more hate.
How would you advise someone from stopping themselves from hating?
A lot of self-reflection and willpower. You have to learn what’s important to you, and you must feel satisfied with being the bigger person.
It feels good to hate in the moment, but it poisons you. It’s kinda like alcohol in that sense. A little is fine, and can even help sometimes, but addiction to it will lead to misery and an early death – whether that death be physical or emotional.
This is getting to a little different but related topic: there are three aspects of being/self: physical, mental, and spiritual. They all work together to make you who you are, and they each have their own health. To fight hate, you must be equally healthy in all three.
What’s difficult about hate, and even more so depression, is that it can start in one aspect of your being, and then spread and corrupt the others.
You can start thinking about hating someone, but eventually hate will start affecting you spiritually and physically. You lose that inexplainable part of you known as your spirit, then you lose the will to take care of yourself physically. And if you can’t take care of yourself physically, then your mind will soon follow.
It’s a vicious cycle, because even if you’re able to make one aspect of your being healthy, if you don’t take care of all of them quickly enough, then the healthy part will just get corrupted again.
Yes! That reminds me of the bio/psycho/social/spiritual idea that we talk a lot about in counseling.
So would it be fair to say that your take on fighting hate is to actively attend to your whole self?
Most definitely.
It’s kinda like the idea “you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others.”
If you aren’t fulfilled as a person, you won’t be able to do anything else until you are. Even if you try to give back to the world, all you’ll be able to do is to take from it, thinking that somehow something outside of you will be able to fix something inside of you.
The most difficult thing about staying healthy is that each aspect of being is more difficult to notice than the next. Everyone can see when you’re physically unhealthy. Those close to you can see when you’re mentally unhealthy. But only you can truly know if you’re spiritually unhealthy.
And a big problem with that is our world has a fundamental misunderstanding of spirituality. That’s why so much suffering is in the world. We neglect our spirit until our body and mind fails.
I think I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. It’s helpful to gain another persons perspective on it.
I think I have been awfully tempted to hate recently and I want to be proactive about fighting it, but not entirely sure what that looks like. Well maybe I did, but I didn’t know how to put it into words.
I like how you put that. The “maybe I did” part.
I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit with how much we actually do understand about the universe, both inside and outside of us. I forget who it was, but a philosopher once said that we never really learn anything, but rather remember it.
It’s just that what’s easy to describe from one aspect is almost impossible from another. That’s why I love poetry. You feel something in your spirit, you form the words in your mind, and then you bring it into the physical world when you write. Writing poetry let’s you adress all aspects of you in one action.
That’s a beautiful way of describing poetry. That thought forces me to think about the things I enjoy in my own life and wonder if I invest time into anything that allows me to be connected to all parts of myself simultaneously.
I think you do, it’s just hard to be aware of it when we’re not entirely aware of our aspects of being. I only recently came to this conclusion about poetry.
Also, if you ever need help with hate or anger, I’m always here to help.
Thank you. I appreciate it. I struggle with it in my personal life, but I’m realizing I also struggle with it in my professional life as well.
The children that I work with have experienced some of the worst traumas a person can go through. Typically these traumas occurred because the people that were supposed to be protecting and advocating for them failed. It’s hard not to hate those who failed when you’re staring into the eyes of an innocent child.
I know exactly what you mean. Children are probably my favorite thing in the world. They’re so pure, and they have so much potential to be amazing. It’s the greatest evil to destroy the will of a child.
And I definitely struggle with hating people who destroy the lives of children. And though I struggle, I try to remember that they were once a child who was probably failed by those who were supposed to care.
I still can’t excuse their actions, and I don’t feel negative emotions when their actions finally come back to bite them. But I never let myself feel positive emotions when something bad happens.
When something bad happens to them, I try to feel remorse. Because I think it’s important that when you see someone who acts in a way you disagree with, that you don’t wish for pain and punishment for them, but rather that they’ll learn from their mistakes, and become the good person that everyone is able to be.
As I was writing, it reminded me the story of Saul/Paul. Someone who was once the worst persecuter of Christianity would eventually become one of the greatest disciples.
That’s funny that you say that.
I was spending a lot of time today challenging my own thoughts, and one of the things I told myself to do was to picture one of my clients as a parent, and the likelihood of them causing their children pain is a lot greater just given their experiences, and I was able to extend even the smallest amount of empathy towards their parents.
Yeah, I know people hold the capacity for change. Otherwise I wouldn’t be pursuing this kind of work. I think of some of my greatest failures and shortcomings and how desperate I was for grace and forgiveness… that helps.
I think it’s one thing when someone expresses remorse, because I am able to connect to their humanity a little easier, but with those that don’t have any remorse for whatever they’ve done it’s a lot harder.
This is going to get a little bit away from the philosophy I’m more certain about, but I’ll try to explain my feelings towards people who lack remorse and empathy.
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