Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
Let no man pull you low enough to hate him. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dick Van Dyke turned one hundred years old, and he said, “Avoid hate and anger to live a long life.”
If you listen to podcasts, hate and anger seem to be the order of the day. Everyone is ranting about something, and they look at the worst someone says as being all they stand for.
By most standards, we live better than most of our ancestors; we have more options, but we demoralize everyone, telling them and ourselves we are victims. We are a victim because of the inequality between the rich and the poor, clashes of cultures, religion, and class.
We look at our history and put the worst possible spin on everything that was done, tearing down heroes and turning them into villains. I’ve had a much easier life than my parents. I didn’t recognize opportunities. I have opinions on decisions made, I think should have been different, but I don’t know for sure what the outcome would have been.
What builds a good life? What builds a strong country are questions we should all ask ourselves. But what happens when my ideologies don’t mesh with yours? When what someone wants to protect interferes with what someone wants to build, and when historical issues rear their head, threatens society as we know it. What does a fair and good society look like?
Anger and hatred are the materials from which hell is made. Unknown
Many have bought into the Robin Hood idea of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but that only works until the rich don’t find it worth their while to build something someone can take. What if the builders quit building, inventers quit inventing, and progress stops? It might be okay for a while, but if it’s true a society either evolves or devolves, we have to be careful where we end up.
Does hating change or people who change things help? Does it make us feel powerful without doing anything?
I’m interrupted in my writing by my three-year-old grandson. He wants toast, when I make the toast and butter it, he wants it with peanut butter, then he wants chocolate milk, and when I make that, he wants more milk (the cup is full enough if it’s filled more he’ll spill it). He cries; I leave the kitchen because no matter what I do, he wants more. This seems like the society we live in; appeasement does not help. Trying to make people happy doesn’t seem to work. We give until we feel there is nothing more to give, expecting gratitude, but finding none.
When we do things for ourselves, we often satisfy ourselves with results that, if someone else did them, wouldn’t be satisfactory. Is building a life or a society different?
Could it be, the more we do for others, the worse it gets? Can we teach everyone to do for themselves? When we raise children, it takes longer to accept their help than to do it ourselves, but if we don’t let them do things when they are no help at all, they don’t learn. Is building a society different?
Can anger and hate be used as powerful motivators for positive change? But who decides what change is positive? How can we keep everything we love and change everything we hate?
A new year is before us; can we harness hate and anger? Happy New Year!
Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves. Mitch Albom
Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better. Sydney J. Harris
Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. Aristotle
Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.