On Hatred

3

We’ve had days, weeks, years, centuries, millennia of hatred. You can dress it up in whatever disguise you like: religion, nationalism, football teams, whatever, its so damn easy to hate, particularly if you feel you are the victim.

Hate goes down real easy, it feels good, but the hangover hurts like hell. The obvious solution? Hair of the dog – more hate.

Forgiveness? Impossible surely. How can you forgive someone who kills, who hurts, who causes pain to another.

The problem is we just pass the pain on.

That’s when we turn around and say ‘Fuck you, God.’ Usually we follow that up with a prayer.

But in the words of Saint Paul of Tallaght, ‘Daddy’s Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car.’ And he does and he has.

That’s the unique selling point.

 

Saint Anger

We all feel it, we all enjoy a dose of righteous anger, but where does it lead to? Where is the end of the line? The answer in my experience is that it usually makes the situation worse. Not that I’m any kind of angel. I’m as bad as everyone else.

Anger is step two of the Will to Negation. Step one is isolation, the anxiety of hopelessness. Step three is destruction. The W2N is the antisocial value, anti-hope.

I guess the first step in curing any kind of sickness is the realisation that we are not well. Then we can unblock anger, turn it into something good by doing one of the hardest things in the world.

To forgive someone for something unforgivable, to forgive someone even for something vile and depraved, something the perpetrator might not even want our forgiveness for. It isn’t win-lose. It’s win-win, because anger poisons us inside.

Forgiveness heals. It rebuilds.

Anger and forgiveness are choices.