If You Hate Donald Trump…

Life is not static and neither are we.

Our ideas, our behavior, our world…always changing, always adapting or dying.

It’s comforting for me to think of what’s going on today, in our social and cultural spheres as a single, evolving person. A person who’s waking up, who’s struggling with new awareness, struggling with acceptance, struggling with change, a person, a human. Imagine the entirety of the human experience today as a single person.

Maybe this person is 15 years old. Maybe this person is 3. Maybe they’re 6 months old…
I don’t know how old this “person” would be, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be an adult.

It’s not so far fetched. Think of the last time you didn’t do what you said you were going to do. Think of the time you decided to sit on the couch instead of going to the gym, think of the time you decided to eat the cake instead of not eating the cake, of the time you indulged your anger at a loved one or over reacted in traffic. We all struggle against the demons of ourselves. That is humanity. We are struggling against the demons of ourselves.

Today’s “craziness” is a reflection and manifestation of our own internal struggle. Sides that seem so diametrically opposed to each other that one side must be defective, alien, not human. But that’s not true.

Why?

Because today or yesterday or maybe just now, you just exhibited a trait that you detest. I sometimes treat my loved ones as if they are the worst people in the world. I behave as if I’ve been taken over by some monster, by some force, that just wants to punish and hurt, so much so that in the moment that punishment and hurt feel good to inflict. And then after, sometimes immediately, sometimes days later, there’s another part of me that recognizes the monster and that recognizes that I’ve hurt a person I care about.

I used to hate that part of me until I realized that hating that part of me was what that part of me wanted, in fact was what that part of me fed on and used to grow more powerful. That’s right…the hate of the trait in myself was the fuel for the trait I hated. So I committed not to hate, hate. But that kind of sucks, because in order to not hate, hate, I have to learn to, first, recognize that I think parts of myself are hateful, and deserve to be hated and that’s a painful, humbling thing to realize about yourself.

So it doesn’t matter if there’s something out in the world that really deserves to be hated, sorry, there’s just no way out of this. If you choose to hate the thing you hate then you become the exact thing you hate.  You become hate, you create hate, you are hate. Talk about a self sabotaging behavior…

If you hate Donald Trump…