The worst punishment you can inflict upon your enemy is not to hate him but make him hate someone else. Henry More has put it: "If I wanted to punish an enemy it should be by fastening on him the trouble of constantly hating somebody."
Why we should not ourselves let the fire burn us from inside is that it converts life into a private hell. It is a source of perpetual torment and mental torture. It roasts one on shoals of burning emotion. It reduces our emotional life to a heap of ashes.
This fiery emotion, more hurtful than hunger, has two disadvantages: it supplies us with a mark to shoot at, and a pretence to fire. Neither brings even a trace of goodness.
Balzac calls it "the vice of narrow souls." He is right because a narrow soul feeds itself on its narrowness and pettiness. The more pretty we become, the more excuses we invent to inflict our torments and tyrannies on the objects of our hatred.
It is overlooked that our hatred lowers us in our estimation, though we rationalize it, But the fact remains that it sinks us beneath those we hate.
When Mahatma Gandhi pleaded: hate sin, not the sinner, he was hinting that there are several other things worth contempt than the sinner. He did not elaborate but we can "hate" (read dislike) hypocrisy, injustice, greed, bribery, corruption, intolerance, and cant.
It seldom strikes us that we hate human beings more than things. The latter, we just dislike. The later is an anaemic "cousin" of the former, but it saves our soul from rust. The former, a powerful emotion, often destroys its possessor Hatred is active. Dislike, in comparison is passive. The former is "madness of the mind", the latter a close kin of envy.
Love is expressed through eyes. Fair, speechless messages go from one lover to the other, carrying the essence and fragrance of soft feelings. Hatred too is carried through glances. The difference between the two is that the latter stab but do not raise any cry of murder. They finish the job in silence, as does a conspirator.
Like malice, hatred is also fretting. It makes us sore and uneasy. We toss on bed as if we are rolling on thorns. It is said that a women in love will sleep comfortably on stones, but one simmering with hatred finds a bed of flowers as it were of thorns.
A banal saying goes thus, "Heaven and hell are found in our mind." It is true. He who hates surrounds himself by consuming fires of destruction. By feeding his mind upon this destructive emotion, he deprives himself of the ennobling and strengthening influence of love. Hate, like other emotions, is a part of our personality. No one is without it. Yet, it is a mark of maturity to learn to control it. This hostile drive, like other primitive impulses, has to be tamed. Otherwise, we surrender the claim of calling ourselves 'mature'.
To hate is to bear malice or ill will. It manifests itself injustice, cruelty, miserliness, selfishness, dishonesty, prejudice and discrimination. In short, it is allied to all that is mean and degrading in human nature.
In order to curb this hostile drive, it is essential to learn the forms in which it expresses itself. This is by no means easy as people usually conceal their hate and are unaware of it. Yet, some generalisations are to be made.
Most often it finds expression in hostility towards the person himself. He dislikes himself for it and punishes himself. He resorts to various means to make the punishment effective.
Self-nagging and want of self respect are ways of turning destructive drive upon oneself.
This hatred for the self may assume frightening proportions. Some subject themselves to the gruelling daily routine, some neglect their appearance, and some sleep or rest little to give vent to their penchant for self destruction. Some extreme cases take to chain smoking or drink themselves to a state of near imbecility. These are all pointers to a sort of self-neglect policy. The unexpressed aim of this self-hate is suicide, though gradual.
There are two ways to control this form of hatred: to realize the importance of the self and the significance of love. For the realization of the former, the members of the hate brigade must din into their own ears that hate is the most disintegrating of all emotions.
To have a spell of it once in a while is quite natural, but to pamper and encourage it leads to disaster. It poisons the the crystal stream of life, makes one revengeful and bitter. It is an emotion which consumes its possessor. To nurse it, therefore, is to be ungrateful to life itself.
It is regrettable that love is understood only in sexual sense. In The Art of Loving, Eric Fromm says, "Most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty." It is the faculty which makes us love life as much as person.
All your attitudes, feelings and thinking should be marked by love. You must learn how to assimilate love in your nature.
Make a start by feeling warm towards yourself. It is much easier than loving a person whom who hate. Give yourself the delicious warmth of your acceptance of you. Tell your inner being that you are worthy of being loved.
Do not let hatred block the inflow of love from others. Receive it from others with an open heart and a grateful maid. Hatred will eventually give way to love, replacing destructive urges by constructive ones.
Often, hate is turned on those whom we love most, that is, members of our family and friends. The home, though a closely knit unit where tolerance and understanding should reign supreme, is a place where hate grows in various guises. There can be hatred between husband and the wife or between the parents and children, or between brothers and sisters.
There are lots of ways in which they try to get square of each other. Hostility is evident when a particular member of a family ignores his duty or brings bad name to it. In every home, occasions rise when some member is singled out for neglect, hostility and thoughtlessness.
The same is largely true of friends and associates. Anything-a thoughtless remark, ingratitude, their failure to come up to our expectations,-causes ill-will and resentment. We seldom take their feelings into consideration. We seem to be living in a one-way street.
The man simmering within with hatred might say, "What is the good of telling me that the cure for hatred is to cultivate admiration and esteem for others? I cannot do that while I continue to have hatred. And you tell me that I cannot cease to be hateful until I admire and esteem others."
He is mistaken. In reality, life is never so logical. Mere realization of the causes of his hatred takes one nearer to the cure.
Admiration is impossible where suspicion lurks. To do away with it, you must reveal yourself. You will naturally not like to reveal that you are full of hatred. Do not play the actor. Drop the mask. Be yourself as much as possible.
A little admiration of others can create a new world of love and understanding. It can dissolve hatred, can encourage, can set free, can revive the smothered emotion of love.
I know of two friends who, after a bitter quarrel, parted ways some ten years ago. The malice they bore for each other went on increasing with time. Then came a sudden change.
During conversation with a third friend, one of the former admired the other for some of his good qualities. The third friend reported it to other. He approached the former with a request to be friendly, again. He agreed. Years of hatred dissolved in a few words of admiration.
Esteem is very closely allied to admiration. It means to think highly or to have a favourable opinion. It is an antidote to hatred. You cannot hold a favourable opinion and bear malice at the same time.
The wisest thing is to trust others. If your trust is abused or exploited sometimes, there is no justification to replace it with hatred.
Trust does not mean a stupid gullibility, providing chances to spongers and cheats. It means an attitude which assumes that life is build on trust, that you can be trusted, and expect others to be worthy of it.
Hate is the emotion of division and disintegration; love of cooperation and integration. The former makes life a hell of happiness, the latter a heaven of happiness.
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