Humbled By a Moment of Hate

Yesterday, I felt a moment of hate toward another person. It was the first time in a long time I'd allowed hate a moment in my heart. The hatred came from reading about pain and disappointment experienced by someone I love deeply caused by someone she should've been able to trust. I long ago gave up any hope of the person who inflicted the pain following through on any promise, but this wasn't about me.

I'm not even sure why it hit me so hard. I know how this person is. Hurting others has never concerned her. I am well aware of this.

I try to live my life from a place of love. I try to love even those who hurt me because I believe when we hate we hurt ourselves more than the person we feel hatred toward. So when that moment of hate hit my heart, I felt completely overwhelmed. I fought back tears, but a couple escaped.

I choose to release that hate, to just let it go, to not let it consume me or drive my actions, but I struggled to actually follow through on the release. It popped in there and hung around long enough to remind me that I'm not immune to hatred even though I try my best to live from love even when I have to let someone go from my life.

In this brief moment when hate crept into my heart, I felt out of control. As I released it, I felt humbled because it reminded me how easy it is to slip into hate as well as how easy it is to become overly confident of my ability to live from a place of love. The experience reminded me how important love is and even how important hate can be if only to remind us of the importance of love.

We have a responsibility to choose how we live our lives. I choose love even if I do find it hard to love some people. I just have to remember that to love someone doesn't mean I have to invite that person to be a part of my life.

T. L. Cooper is an author and poet whose work aims to empower and inspire through an exploration of the human condition. Her poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared online, in books, and in magazines. Her published books include a collection of short stories, Soaring Betrayal, her Silhouette Poetry Series, and a novel, All She Ever Wanted. She grew up on a farm in Tollesboro, Kentucky. She currently lives in Albany, Oregon with her husband and three cats.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Image
I recently read A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost . It's a beautiful book and one I'd been salivating over for a while, ever since I saw it in Costco several months ago. It is filled with poems that speak to my heart, my imagination, my core. I was thumbing through one day while reading - yeah, I was looking ahead - and came across Nothing Gold Can Stay , and the first thought that popped in my head was "Stay gold, Ponyboy." I stopped in my tracks as a shiver went up my spine and a smile slid across my face. I remembered in that moment the first time I read The Outsiders   by S. E. Hinton . The first time I read Nothing Gold Can Stay in the book, The Outsiders , the first time I heard the poem aloud in the movie , the first time I read the letter at the end of the book, the first time I heard the letter at the end of the movie... Robert Frost and The Outsiders are forever linked in my memory because of this poem. S. E. Hinton used Nothing Gold Can Stay to
Read more

Benefits to Buying Books

Image
Last week I wrote about supporting authors without buying their books, so this week I want to talk about a few benefits of buying books. To be honest, there's this little voice in my head going "People need reasons to buy books... They're books. That's reason enough." Of course that's the writer and reader in me. The minimalist and anti-consumerist in me totally gets why many people don't want to buy books. Buying books is a commitment. It's adding another "thing" to your shelves, your home, your life. Let me be clear. I understand that people work hard for their money, and buying a book can feel like a luxury. I totally get it. I've been there. The rent, the mortgage, fuel, food should all be higher priorities than buying books. I remember days when I saved change for a month to buy a book. I'm not, in any way, proposing that people sacrifice necessities to buy books. There are advantages to buying a book. You own the book.
Read more

Dona Nobis Pacem

Image
Dona Nobis Pacem translated to English is Grant Us Peace. I love the idea. If only it were so easy... Peace isn't a gift another can bestow upon us; however, peace is a gift we can join in bestowing upon the world. As I think about what peace means to me, I find my heart racing and my breath becoming ragged. Peace isn't as much as about avoiding war and violence as it is about finding connections to one another. Peace comes when we learn to celebrate our differences rather than use them as excuses to hate. Peace breathes when we learn to acknowledge what we have in common with the person we consider the "other" in this world. Peace happens when we reach out helping hands to not only those we love but to those we deem as enemies. Peace spreads when we learn there is no such thing as an "other" because we all inhabit this Earth together. Peace requires we take action. We can look for ways to resolve our problems without needing to exert our power. We can
Read more