Your Hate Has A Deeper Meaning!

A letter to my ex trying to understand his perspective and being OK with it.

Photo by Dan Edge on Unsplash

In the face of uncertainty and chaos, its normal to feel anger, hatred, confusion and helplessness. All these are enough to turn us bitter and take us away from humanity. All these are enough to also take away our love, compassion and kindness. So be very careful not to become bitter and instead grow from the experience. Learn from your experiences and never lose the sight of what is important.

Today I attended this seminar in which this Buddhist monk talked about how to deal with uncertainty. It was so enlightening. He said that we tend to hold on to hate because if we let go of the hate then we will be forced to face our pain. He said people tend to hold on to their opinions, racism, judgments and hate towards someone because that gives them an inner shield where they will never have to face their own pain and flaws.

I get it now. I get you now. I know why you are holding on to the hate. I know why you hate me so much now. There is nothing wrong with this. We all choose different ways to heal and grow. This is your way and I totally understand that. If you look past the hate and actually feel that I did what I did because I was scared and because of my insecurities then you will have to face the pain. The pain of losing the love. The pain of losing the beautiful future we could have had.

Its as simple as this. There are only two outcomes of this —

1. I am this diabolic evil witch that was out there to get you. That simply wanted to ruin your life. Someone who is mad and just wants to create havoc. Now in this scenario it is perfect to feel hatred towards such human. It makes it easy to move on and thank our stars that we got saved. It is so much easier to hold on to the hate and keep blaming the person for everything that is wrong.
2. This one is tricky. Here you have to look past someone’s reaction and be curious at why they did what they did. Anger is a result of only two things insecurity and pain. Now to think that the other person was so angry because she was hurt and insecure changes the way we feel. We are forced to look past the hate and feel the pain of losing that human. To contemplate ‘oh god! he/she just was insecure and scared to lose me. They needed help. They were vulnerable.’ This creates a whole new level of pain and guilt. Nobody wants to feel that. To think that what if i looked past the flaw and helped someone overcome their insecurity, this would be a different story. We would still be together. Stronger and happier. That loss is much more unbearable than simply walking away from a situation. To think what we could have been and create the future of our dreams while helping each other and growing is painful. Two people who loved each other and chose each other and worked towards a better tomorrow — how perfect that life is. To think that we lost something so precious and pure can really put us down the drain.

So I understand boo. I understand your hatred. I am not mad at you for treating me like this. For giving up on us. You are just trying to protect yourself. Just how I was trying to protect myself. We are all just little kids who are scared and trying to figure life out. The protective walls we build as kids to save ourselves from pain never goes away. Just don’t think people are evil.

Humans are flawed and accepting that we make mistakes and to learn from them is what matters. To be aware and loving and show empathy is what we are. Anger, hatred and hurt is always a result of fear, care and insecurity. Now this doesn’t justify you hurting someone but to accept that we are human and flawed is what counts. To accept your mistake and learn from it is what counts. This is what makes us who we are. If we want to shield ourselves from our own mistakes and want to live thinking we are perfect and think our opinion is the correct one then we are not learning. We are not growing.

Even I was like that where if I created an opinion of someone in my head, I would stick to it. I would not listen to any other opinion. But now I know. Going to therapy and learning from communities of people, listening to Dalai Lama, other monks, famous psychologists, meditation gurus and actually understanding their views with open mind made me realize where I was wrong. Made me realize that we as humans are not evil. Our circumstances and upbringing makes us who we are.

We need to embrace our flaws as much as we embrace our victories. That’s the point of being a human. To love and forgive ourselves and others along the way.