“Hate is a strong word” – This statement I have heard very often but never understood why it is considered strong. Probably the world wants to experience all emotions mildly. Anything intense can get scary for some people. Hate is an intense feeling hence may be considered strong.
No one likes to be hated. But I have no problem if I am hated by anyone. I was not okay to be hated some years ago. Earlier in my life, if I felt I am hated or even not liked by anyone, I was very quick in doing things to fix the opinions of others in order to change their dislike for me to like. I was able to form many harmonious and friendly relationships due to this. But only after I went deep inside me in my spiritual journey, I realized that it was due to lack of self-love I was so much affected by hatred from others towards me. I wanted to love myself through the validation of others. I liked myself when others liked me. I hated my own self when others hated me.
There were many reasons people hated me at different stages of life. People hated me for looking beautiful physically, for having a good fashion sense, for performing well at work, for being intelligent, for being appreciated by my bosses, for having a loving and caring husband, for having a wonderful family, for my happiness. Though I understood that being hated for these things did not make me wrong or a bad person and it should not affect me still the disharmony in the environment always made me feel anxious and I became judgemental towards haters.
Then, I got a new hater. My stepdaughter hated me for becoming the wife of her father who was divorced from her mother for a decade before we got married. She even hated my newborn child as he was not born through her mother’s womb. This led me to go deep down inside me in order to introspect how it affected me. When we know ourselves better, we also get to know others better.
Being aware made me understand and feel the pain of lack of love felt by my stepdaughter. She wanted her father to only love her and no other child, especially from another woman who was not her mother. It was a feeling of “This is mine” and “This is not mine”.
A person-centered in self-love feels happy to see others happy. But the lack of self-love does not make a person a bad person.
It was easy for me to say to myself that- “They are just jealous” and feel good about myself. But as I became more aware, I stopped judging envious or jealous people. Envy and jealousy are feeling when we feel someone has something better than us which makes us feel bad about ourselves. We feel small.
Does that mean that we should stop hanging around envious and jealous people?
Well, Not necessarily. There is no harm in being around such people unless you feel that it can cause any damage to you. It is possible people can play some games to damage the happiness of people for whom they feel envious but if we accept them and share our love, this envy can turn into something beautiful. When we include envy, it transforms into pride.
For example, We don’t feel envious of our child when he is more intelligent than us. We feel proud of it because we feel he/she belongs to us. We only feel envy or jealousy when we feel that it doesn’t belong to us. Our mind separates us from people with our wrong thoughts and false beliefs which we have learned from our environment. Similarly, when we are loved by the people whom we envy, we feel proud to be their friends or relatives. This is how I learned to accept hate. By being inclusive.
How to transform hate into unconditional love?
When the feeling of hate comes, catch that feeling, hold it, do not try to distract yourself, be with this feeling. Go deeper, introspect, and ask yourself – “Where did I learn to feel this way in my life?” When you do that, you will most probably find a phase in your childhood where we felt hated by your parents or teachers or someone from our family environment. For surviving, we learned how to please people in order to remove hate and be loved. And then it became our habit and then our nature.
When we realize who we truly are, we understand that we are neither good nor bad. We just exist as any other creature in this universe. Seeing ourselves as good or bad are just external perspectives which we have internalized and based on that we feel good about ourselves or bad. Feeling good about ourselves can bring out the productive energy to create wonderful things in life. When we feel good about ourselves, we are able to love others unconditionally. When we feel bad about ourselves, we expect others to love us, and not every time our expectations are fulfilled. When we don’t get the love we expect, we feel even worse about ourselves and then we feel envy for others who look happier than us.
When we become more aware, we understand ourselves better and we accept ourselves with our flaws. Only when we are able to accept ourselves completely, we automatically are able to accept other’s hate or envy and remain unaffected by it or maybe transform it into love.
There are many therapies that help you in your better understanding of yourself. You can find a trusted Therapist and work with him/her and lead a better quality of life.
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