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It has become obvious that the subjects I touch upon are very general and can apply to anyone. I've already mentioned God, love, death, meditation, stupidity, drugs, sex, etc. Now I want to take some time and discuss with you, the reader, about hate.
What is hate? Hate is a type of Fear, Fear is the father of Hate. As many psychoanalytic simplifications might suggest, everything under the sun falls under the categories of either Fear or Love. This concept, Hate, is continuously used in reference to something we are familiar with and simultaneously decide to absolve ourselves from it's source of pain. We could hate people, ideas, emotions, ignorance etc. Any affiliation with the unknown and simultaneously associated with something we're familiar with provokes feelings of hatred. I'm suggesting here that hatred is a negative emotional reaction to an unexpected result.
I have a dear friend of mine that is recently over a break up. Her stories about her boyfriend were emotionally confusing and the dialog easy to misunderstand. His explanation for the break up was clear but his actions spoke differently. Throughout all this confusion, it is no wonder that she concluded the following words: I hate him.
This same friend asked me a random question about the heart.
She said, "Vincent, what is the definition of a heartache?"
After minutes of pondering the question I responded with, "It is the emotion you feel when you know someone took something away from you that you know you can't have back."
I honestly cannot say whether she agreed with me or not, but I do believe the words I spoke. What we cannot have back is what terrifies us. We, as free agents of this universe, create and innovate our environment with the gifts of love and creativity. When our ability to love or create is taken away from hurtful criticism and ambiguity of the connection, we will naturally react with negative emotions as a result of human stupidity.
We cannot hate without harboring the element of fear in our hearts. It is simply the consequences of fear that lead to our suffering and inevitably to hate.
Hate is never justifiable. If we hate it's because of fear. When we fear it is because of a lack of love. When we lack love we lose understanding.
1 comment:
Interesting commentary, some of which I'd agree with strongly, such as your definition of heartache.
I have to admit to very recently having harbored a lot of hatred. In my case it was also due to loss of love, and the hatred was directed towards the man my wife was leaving me for. I'd definitely agree that there is a correlation between the lower emotional tones (grief, anxiety, anger, apathy, fear, overt and covert hostility, ...) and hatred when it exists. However, I think that tying hatred only to one lower emotional tone of fear is too strong a statement. I'd say as soon as you drop into many of these lower tones (which I've not ordered in any sort of natural downwards progression), you are liable to start down the path of irrational emotional expression. There doesn't have to be fear itself for the hatred to form or persist, because this can occur even before dropping that low.
Any of these lower emotional tones, not just fear, are sufficient to generate plenty of negative and stupid reactions, not restricted to hatred. It can be a difficult cycle to break too, since it feeds back on itself in a degenerative fashion. In my case that feedback included starting to hate my wife, somebody I'd not ever have believed or have wanted to hate, in any circumstance.
For myself I broke out of negative lower emotional toned states with a simple realization. I noted that we did many activities well together and had fun doing so, and this was sufficient to develop a strong emotional and physical connection between us. However, fundamentally, when there wasn't some sort of activity involved, neither of us ever found the other interesting, and this did not allow for the meaningful communication that would have been required to build understanding and maintain the initial emotional and physical connection. So our marriage breakdown was probably inevitable, with or without the other guy. The act of understanding this, something that seemed to me to be a plausible (albiet suprising) root cause was sufficient to gain acceptance of the situation, and break from the anger, and the grief, and stop blaming myself and my wife and the other guy, and stop any hatred.
Through all of this, when I felt hatred, did I really have any fear? Most of the fear was minor, and restricted to not having a grip on the unknown (Where I am going to live after we split, How much time will I have with my kids, what will my bills be like when I have child support and a mortgage of my own, how do I start dating again after all this, ...). I wouldn't rank those fears very high, since they are mainly logistical issues that can be tackled systematically one at a time. Sure, there were many losses, and still more potential for loss (which does imply some fear overtones), but I wouldn't personally characterize the hatred, when it existed, as having had fear as the primary causal driving force.
Only now that I've broken from the lower emotional tones (all of which are are exhausting and draining), can I comment on this in any sort of rational fashion.
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