When you feel resigned to lose against hate, knowing you have a choice in your action matters. Knowing your response is prompted because of another and not from within yourself makes you pause and look over your convictions before saying anything.
How do you respond when a friend, spouse or relative rejects you? What do you do when your boss tells you you're not good enough? What do you feel when you hear a racial slur?
Understanding that others' hate comes from their own hurt, fear, misunderstanding, or grief humanizes them and also your response to their negativity. Knowing an eye for an eye only leaves you more hateful in the end, you put something positive out there, not to counteract but to heal.
Only sometimes do I succeed at responding to hate with love, but I understand why it can't be a strategy and instead comes from a deep connection with one's own vulnerabilities.
Empathy develops from a practice of self-awareness, discovering the minutiae that make you as human as those around you. The humility it takes to be continually positive without expectation seems awesome from the outside, but I bet it's as easy as flexing your hand when you know it. It's within you because you've become the person capable of it.
How do you respond when a friend, spouse or relative rejects you? What do you do when your boss tells you you're not good enough? What do you feel when you hear a racial slur?
Understanding that others' hate comes from their own hurt, fear, misunderstanding, or grief humanizes them and also your response to their negativity. Knowing an eye for an eye only leaves you more hateful in the end, you put something positive out there, not to counteract but to heal.
Only sometimes do I succeed at responding to hate with love, but I understand why it can't be a strategy and instead comes from a deep connection with one's own vulnerabilities.
Empathy develops from a practice of self-awareness, discovering the minutiae that make you as human as those around you. The humility it takes to be continually positive without expectation seems awesome from the outside, but I bet it's as easy as flexing your hand when you know it. It's within you because you've become the person capable of it.