What's happening in America right now - again - reminded me of this post I wrote three short years ago. Of how hatred halts all progress, refuses growth, refuses to learn, refuses to change.
How it is never, not ever, satisfied.
Enough isn't in its vocabulary; it can't be. Hate is all consuming, all demanding, unyielding in its pursuit of whatever it deems necessary to be destroyed...
...or conquered.
Remaining silent and complacent only gives it more strength.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." - Desmond Tutu
This applies to everything.
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| Society6 Mehersgoel |
The unbelievable acts that took place recently in Charlottesville, VA got me thinking: What is the purpose of hate?
We grow up learning that "hate" is a bad word. As children, we're taught not to use it because we don't fully understand the implications of what it means. However, as adults, it appears some of us have forgotten that lesson. Maybe some of us never learned it in the first place.
We direct hate freely, in any and all ways we see fit. We don't just say we hate this or we hate that, we feel it. We let it permeate our beings, make a home in our bones. We let it control, we let it devour. We let it be a weapon in the war against others because, for some of us, it feels good.
What happens is destruction of the soul caused by a single, powerful, all consuming emotion.
This is the purpose of hate.
It's only when we grow out of the feeling of hatred, when we grow with and into love, that we see how childish of a feeling hate really is. How foolish, how lacking. How it demands we worship it, follow it, do its bidding. How we become prisoners of what it wants, what it will always want: more.
Let's play the devil's advocate for a moment. Let's pretend that everyone involved in the acts in Charlottesville eventually get what they want- utopia. A perfect world of only white people who look like them, share the same views they do. Then what? Are we to assume this is their happily ever after? That by quenching their thirst for hate they will be satisfied once and for all?
Hitler orchestrated the murder of millions. Do you think he ever felt satisfied? Do you think he ever thought it was enough?
No.
The answer will always be no. There is no such thing as satisfaction when it comes to hate. If this utopia existed, if they got exactly what they wanted, they'd eventually find something new to hate. They'd bicker among themselves, they'd find imperfections, and a new kind of enemy would be formed. A new era of problems, of people that are unworthy, of things that are "wrong" and do not belong. No one that allows these kinds of feelings inside of them ever finds satisfaction. They spend their whole lives chasing the next thing that must be destroyed.
Hate is a drug.
It will always want more. More of your time, more of your life, more damage and destruction and you- more of you, until there's nothing left but a miserable shell of a person who wasted their life running after unreachable goals.
Love, on the other hand, will rebuild.
It will nourish, it will soothe, it will open spaces inside of you that you never knew existed. Love will not demand more from you, it will not take- it will give. It will give and give and give, and just when you think there is no room left inside of you, it will find a crack, a crevice, an opening- and then it will give you more.
Love is the only cure for the hate virus. Only with love do we find true satisfaction and fulfillment in life. Everything else will leave you empty, leave you wanting, leave you in need. Everything else is a decoy.
Let us build a world so full of love that hate has no place left to live.
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