I used to hate the person who abused me. They hurt me, badly, over and over again; and for years afterwards I used to lie awake at night seething with hatred for them. My hate felt right. It felt justified.
But eventually, I realized that I had to let my hatred go. Why? For two reasons.
First, my hate wasn’t doing anything to the person who abused me. Day after day my pulse would pound with rage as I thought about them. But here’s the problem. We hadn’t spoken in years. We were no longer in each others’ lives. So what was my hate accomplishing? I was thinking violent thoughts and hoping that my abuser would pick up on them via…what? A psychic link? Some sort of telepathic connection that I didn’t know about but that I hoped, somehow, existed?
It occurred to me that my hatred wasn’t accomplishing any of my goals.
I think about this a lot in our current political climate. I have friends who hate Kamala Harris and friends who hate Trump. Cards on the table, I would rather vote for Harris than Trump. But suppose I hated Trump. Would that endow me with more votes? Would it magically deposit more money in my bank account, so I could donate more to Team Harris? Would my hatred give me more hours in the day that I could use to phone bank and volunteer? I don’t think so.
I think we can fight our opponents without hating them. I think we can oppose them without hating them. I think we can vote, donate money, canvass and phone bank, and do everything else to stop them from winning election or reelection…all without hating them. When it comes to politics, I don’t think our hatred does us any good.
The second reason I started to let go of my hate was that it was making me miserable. It was gnawing at my bones as I paced the small living room of my apartment. It was sapping my energy. It was eating up my free time. It was distracting me from work, from time with friends and family…from life.
Hatred, as the old saying goes, is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
And then one day I started to let go of my hatred (and the letting go was, to be clear, a long process). And life started to open up before me. I had more free time. I had more energy. I was able to be more present with friends and family. I met my beautiful wife. I became less miserable. And as I let go of my hatred, something else started to seep in in its place. Peace. Joy. Connection. Love. The sheer beauty of being fully awake to the present moment.
Elections are important. Politics is important. Fighting for what we believe in is important. But I look at my friends who hate Harris, and my friends who hate Trump. And I wonder if they aren’t missing out, just a little bit, on the richness and fullness of life. I wonder if their hate might not be crowding out, just a little bit, something better.
Because here’s the truth…when I look back on how my life opened up after I started the process of letting go of my hate, I’m struck powerfully by a single thought: I wish I had let it go sooner.
