On the uses of hatred
or how I learned to relax and love the blackest of emotions
(Also - read this companion essay on anger)
Last night I went to see a band in NYC, and afterward a few friends and I went out to a bar. A friend and I were talking about how we were disappointed in the show, and I said that the main thing that annoyed me was how one of the lead guys in the band pretended to be so sensitive and cute and in touch with his feelings, but I could tell, from previous shows, from knowing people who know him, from my amazing intuitive abilities, and from the way he happened to push past everyone no less that 7 times before the show with that annoyed “oh, these plebeians in my way!” look, that he was a total asshole, not to mention only marginally talented, as his voice is thin and reedy and ingratiating. Along with us was this guy I didn’t know well, and he just sort of stared at me while I chatted merrily on about what a an ass I thought this dude was, then said, “Well, nothing like a little positivity to brighten a Saturday night.”
It seems like things like this happen all the time to me, and I can’t decide if I’m just the rare one who tells it like it is (shitty, usually) or if I just have absolutely no tact and commit horrible faux pas all the time. I guess it’s both. I don’t want to say that it’s because I’m Jewish, (because my hatred of religion prevents me from claiming the big J…what’s that joke, I’m not Jewish, I’m Jew-ish?), but I have a great need to let off steam. I get
And what’s so bad about being relentlessly negative?
Ok, I’m not relentlessly negative, just when something strikes me as horribly unfair, fucked-up or stupid. At home, snuggling on the couch with my sweet, my cats, a snack, and a food porn magazines (you know the kind, Gourmet and their ilk, with centerfolds of rustic Tuscan pasta and shit), I am a paragon of bliss. But when faced with car bombs in Iraq and Iowa caucuses and mayor Bloomberg, why should I pretend to me anything less than outraged, snide, and upset? The second helps you through the other two, trust me.
Myth #1 about negativity: the more you dwell on it, the more it will become a part of who you are.
Truth: negativity that comes from looking at the world honestly can inspire greater action, and can be kept in check by appreciating the wonderful parts of the world.
Here is a fantastic story I read a long time ago, told in this version by the amazing Toni Morrison. It is only peripherally about the topic of this essay, but it's a good story:
"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise." Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.
"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise.
"In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.
"One day the woman is visited by some young people
She does not answer, and the question is repeated. "Is the bird I am holding living or dead?"
Still she doesn't answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.
The old woman's silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.
Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. "I don't know", she says. "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands."
Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.
I think of that story often, that old woman and the little bird. I know my negativity and the decision of how to use it is in my hands. So I try not to feed the negativity too much, and to use what I already have for good purposes. I try to feed the secret and precious joy I often feel as a sensitive person in the world. But it has been my experience that joy addicts rarely change the world. Angry angry activists change the world. People who can harness the negativity they see all around them, the unbearable fuckedupness of being, change the world. I don’t want to get trapped in the joy bubble, so intent on seeing the wonder of the world in a drop of rain on a maple leaf that I don’t notice that even though Cheney’s own daughter is a lesbian he still doesn’t believe in gay marriage, and who are these people, and when are we going to send them to prison? I still spend plenty of time marveling at how amazing my sourdough bread is and all that, and that does keep me sane, but I can't deny the other side.
Myth #2: You can’t change anything just be being upset about it.
Truth: What? Yes, you can! Admittedly, being upset is only the first step, but if I can be only mildly (I hope) self-indulgent here, I think of myself as an influencer. I see my role in the world as someone who wakes people up to the idiotic climate in which we are living, and I have seen
several examples of how my quiet fury has changed a lot more people’s minds than I ever did at marches and rallies.
It’s important to show people that they way we are collectively living is unbearable, untenable, unsustainable, and idiotic.
At the same time, you need to find a way not to crush yourself under the weight of all the terror in this world (I mean terror in a pre 9/11 way). For me, the way is not to force myself to sit through a million boring-ass meetings about Iraq and how if we all just wrote more letters to our congresspeeps it would all go away. For me the way to deal with it is to talk about it, stir things and people up, live it.
Ok, enough with negativity. Let’s move on to hatred and refusing forgiveness.
First, hatred. Here are my conflicted thoughts on the subject.
Myth: We should never use the word "hate."
Truth: Realizing that some things are deserving of hatred frees us to focus on more important things.
Jacob’s sister Pohanna is someone I admire a lot. She is giving, sweet, creative, talented, kind, worldly, all of those things a good sister and friend and person should be. I often feel like a dark little ball of forehead wrinkles compared to her, but that’s OK. She’s a person who tries not to say words like “hate” and, unlike many people I know who make rules for themselves like that, I think she does it not because she is striving to be someone she will never be, but because she finds she doesn’t need the negative energy those words bring. I mainly intensely dislike most new age-y people, but I believe in karma, auras, and energies (to a certain extent). And I believe that this does help her live her life in a happier way, and I love her for that.
But I don’t live that way. I would like to see less hatred in the world, and I would like to personally contribute less hatred to the world, but I think some things are deserving of that word. I over use it, though, and I should try to be more precise with my language. I don’t think Gandhi believed in the liberational power of harnessing hatred, because it obviously does not let you look into your enemy’s heart and it doesn’t even really help you in the struggle as a nonviolent warrior. In fact, the emotion of hate is itself a form of violence. But. Just as I hold on to my anger for dear life, afraid to let it go lest I become a zombie without it, I reserve the right to hate. But I do need to respect its power more than I do.
Next, refusing forgiveness, a.k.a. Jesus was secretly lying to himself.
Myth: Being able to forgive is one of the greatest gifts.
Truth: Sometimes it's better to move on and not waste energy on unforgivable things people have done.
I think I have confided on lagusta.com before that I have the shameful trait of keeping a mental list of things my friends have done I consider reprehensible, and if the list gets too long I make a conscious decision to drop that friend. Probably everyone does that to a certain extent. But it does mean I hold grudges (no BFF business for me), and I just cannot “forgive and forget.” I mean, if a friend forgets my birthday that’s fine, but if they say “the Mexicans” or “dude, that’s so gay/retarded” enough, I just don’t want to be around them. Ever. Why bother? There are so many more interesting people in the world. One night when we were in college, this guy Jacob and I knew was over at our house and, like all college students, we were boasting that we lived in the worst possible part of town. This guy said “no way dude, I mean, at least there are white people on your street, my street doesn’t even have that!”
Jacob and I both crossed him off the list right then. When we got an invitation to his wedding 2 years later, to this sorority girl neither of us could stand, which boasted both pre- and post- wedding golf, we both just stood and stared at it, like, how did this thing make it’s way into our house?
What’s the deal with grudges? I think if you don’t remember the things people did to you, eventually you reach a point where people just walk all over you. It’s all about the pros and the cons. My mom is one of my top two favorite people in the world, but when my brother and I were growing up she did basically nothing to stop the shit that was happening all around us. But I love her, and I don’t blame her for it. I was able to get past it because I realized that not only is she the most interesting, strange, and big-hearted person I’ve ever met, but I want to have a future with her. I don’t want a future with my dad, but I think about living closer to my mom all the time just so I can savor the happiness of a day-to-day life with her again. The pros out weighed the cons. I didn’t forget the past, but I am able to be free of it.
I was trying to explain to a self-described “joy junkie” my feelings for my father. How free I feel since I wrote him a letter telling him I didn’t want to have any contact with him. How deep was the release I felt when I ,
So anyway, the more I tried to convince said person that I was actually more free when I told myself I didn’t have to go through the agony of pretending to forgive my father, the more she quietly told herself (in an increasingly calm and soothing-to-cover-up-deep-agony voice that that was just my way of forgiving him. So we had this conversation for about 5 solid minutes – me saying I had not forgiven him, and her saying that was my way of forgiving him.
Hmmmmmm.
I love humanity. You cannot possibly believe me after all this horrible stuff I wrote, but I do. Well, I love the idea of humanity. The circle of life. Communities. Families and marriages and nations and all that don’t thrill me that much, as a matter of fact I am just a tad sickened by them, but I love humanity. That’s not the same as saying I’m a “people person,” which would imply that I desire to interact with people, which I rarely ever do. I just love that here we are, on this bluegreen planet, and what the fuck are we going to do with it? I love humanity in that way, in the sense that we have a lot of promise and we’ve done a lot of wonderful things.
But there are what, 6 billion people on the planet? I don’t love them all, not all of them have good in their hearts, and the world would be better off if some of
That’s why I had to write that letter to my father – my heart was so taken up with hatred for him I couldn’t love the other wonderful people in my life as much as I needed to love them. Now that I don’t need to worry about loving him, there is enough space for my amazing friends, my sweet partner, my cats, my wonderful mother, and myself. It has enlarged my heart. It sounds nonsensical, but that’s because life is just more complicated than we want to believe.
Sigh.
It seems that in all of these rants, I reach a point where I get overwhelmed with some emotion, do my best to express it in a witty and clear way, then pass over some hump and sigh. My mentor Noel would say the sighs mean I need ignatia, the homeopathic remedy for grief. I catch myself sighing a lot. I find myself grieving for this fallen world more often than anything else.
After the sigh comes the sappy ending.
I’m almost 26, and I’m getting into deep emotions lately. About a year ago (ok, to be fair I think it started when I found myself too far downtown on a summery day in 2001 and although I am deeply saddened/enraged by the ways that day has been used to take away precious freedoms, I do at the same time need to admit that it changed a lot of things in me. It was the first time I saw people being killed and killing themselves right in front of my eyes, for example) I tapped some deep well of pain in myself, like a mouth full of overdue cavities, and I’ve been working to come out whole on the other side of it for a while now. I’ve done a lot of good work. It’s taken major guts to not run away from these feelings but I think I’m strong enough to handle it. I refuse to become a martyr and carry my pain around on my bent back, but I also refuse to work through it quietly and politely. It’s a noisy pain, this pain of being alive, and I don’t intend to shut up any time soon.
february 2004