I often get angry. It allows me to focus emotions, concentrate, and sometimes express myself. It is an extremely useful tool for me to use internally and in dealing with a chaotic world.
But the far end of anger is hatred, which I avoid strenuously. Hatred is a smoldering long-term anger, not subject to rational consideration. It is appropriate to be angry at a motorist who just cut me off. It is useless to extend that to a constant hatred of all other motorists or automobiles in general.
The worst hatreds are the artificial ones, not generated from personal experiences of anger, but inculcated from the views of family, peers, or media. Hatfield’s must hate McCoys. Short people must hate the tall.
Too often, hatreds are useful excuses. If I know that dwarfs run the country and I hate them passionately, I can blame any given dwarf for me losing my job last week. Or whatever. Instead of actually trying to figure out why I lost that job, or just saying “the hell with it” and moving on.
Most hatred eventually becomes an embedded blemish of the soul. It is subject to neither rational discussion nor useful perspective. And, for the most part, hatred makes any individual more socially unfit _ which just feeds the hatred.
The real trick is to turn developing hatred into immediate anger. And to deal with that anger as we would any other fleeting emotion.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 