The H Word

Love lives in our hearts. It's only our ego that creates its opposite.

Photo by John Bussell on Unsplash

Have you seen those “Hate Has No Home Here” signs, usually adorned with a number of symbols of allegiance to various causes and ideologies? I feel a kind of revulsion towards those signs. Partly because it’s not true - just by putting the word there, it is being given a home - on the sign, and now in the minds of everyone that sees it, with all the negative emotions that arise with the concept. And partly because it implies that hate is out there, circulating around, and some kind of barricade is needed to keep it at bay - like a garland of garlic to ward off vampires. But my experience says it’s not the hate out there that I need to worry about, it’s the hate of my own mental creation that’s the real danger.

Since being on the other side of the mainstream these past few years I have seen how quickly the H word gets tossed around. Words affiliated with hatred, like racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic or xenophobic get used regularly, and people disagreeing with particular political policies or ideological slogans are quickly labelled as such by those who feel differently. School boards, governments and the media have done this to such a degree that one could assume hatred is rampant in our society - and needs to be stamped out by regulations, censorship and expensive training programs (many of which inevitably get withdrawn or updated at some later point for being offensive in a redefined way).

I have been observing and criticizing when others see hate where it’s not. Reading and hearing the pejorative adjectives assigned towards those who weren’t on board with the COVID program, after being one of them and knowing in my heart that I wasn’t any of the labels being used - sensitized me to where those in the mainstream were imagining hatred where it didn’t exist. But until recently I hadn’t been able to see where I’ve been doing the same thing myself.

I finally discovered my own mistake a few nights ago. I was watching a video (from Twitter, of course), that compiled all the worst things that the media said about “The Unvaccinated” in one tidy, emotionally manipulative 3 minute clip. As I watched it I felt, on cue, my emotions rise - I felt anger and sadness. I wanted to cry. I wanted to rage. When I looked at the clip, I saw hatred. I saw evil. And I prepared to write a response on Twitter, calling everybody in the news - and everybody who watched the news - out for their cruelty. But suddenly, I saw what was happening in a way I’d never seen before.

I was creating hatred in my own mind. I was poisoning myself with the evil that was coursing through my veins. The evil and hatred came from my belief that it was hatred and evil in the hearts of the media announcers, in the hearts of the politicians, in the hearts of all the people who wanted vaccine mandates and disowned friends and family who didn’t get on board.

But the reality that I’m much more familiar with is this: we all have love in our hearts. Whether we are a politician, an activist, a journalist or an armchair critic, it’s love that is there when all else is stripped away.

Hate is an invention of the ego. I don’t dispute that people are harmed by the actions of others. Discrimination at the workplace or in the criminal justice system due to race, denial of access to marriage or legal recognition due to sexual orientation, or exclusion of children from summer camp due to their medical status all cause harm and suffering. Yet if we truly went inside the minds of the people doing these things, we would see something else. We might see fear. We might see a desire to protect. We would very likely see misunderstanding, and ingrained childhood conditioning. We would see a host of explanations that would make sense - they wouldn’t justify allowing harm to continue, but they would allow for compassion to exist. For us to remain sisters and brothers in this immense universe where each of us is a precious, miraculous, statistical near-impossibility.

I see hate when I can’t see another explanation. Since I have an experience of hate myself - I’ve felt it viscerally when I’ve been wounded physically or emotionally - I am able to conjure it up and project that into the mind of the person who I’m judging when I don’t understand what they are doing or saying.

In response to seeing an action or a belief that I disagree with, if I assume there’s hate behind it, then I create hate. And when I create hate, I suffer all its effects and fall victim to it myself. I feel the exclusion or criticism of me as if it was based on hate. I feel hate in my blood and in my bones, and it makes me sick - and contagious since I spread it around when I feel it. I yell, accuse, withdraw or attack. None of which really changes the situation to which I’m reacting.

Many of you are likely wiser than I am. My husband for instance - I exclaim that I see hate, and he argues with me since he has a different perspective. Up until now it’s bothered me when he tries to show me another angle - it’s like he’s joining the enemy. But now I realize it’s because the hate I create blinds me to anything else - including being shown that there’s another way of looking things. Otherwise why wouldn’t I want to see something that’s so much kinder to me?

So what would it feel like to imagine the people who we feel have wronged us (or others) aren’t actually hateful? That there is another explanation - an explanation we may never get - for why they act the way they do? Feel what it’s like to think someone hates you. And then feel what it’s like to see that they just don’t understand. That they have a fragile ego, trying to figure out this crazy life, making huge mistakes along the way, just like we are. For me, it feels like a weight off my chest when I realize I don’t need to assume it’s hate.

Of course, it’s not impossible that there is hate - I’ve certainly acted with cruelty or expressed hate when I’ve been out of my mind, believing that I’ve been wronged. But it’s not what’s in my heart. And it’s not in the heart of anyone else either. And while the actions others take may touch us, the hate that may or may not exist in their mind doesn’t need to. So let’s not assume that it’s there.

If the H word is out there in the world, I don’t need to take it on. And if I really don’t want it in my home, it’s time for me to stop creating it here.