By Dina Aldabbagh

Imagine all that anger you feel towards them driving you to look yourself in the mirror and swear just so you can get it out and imagine that you’re saying it to them. But…whose face are you looking at when you say those things? The person you’re looking at when you spew that hate is not them, it’s you. It’s your own reflection. 

It feels like you’re getting it out of you, but you’re the only one receiving it. When you say all those things out loud, looking yourself in the face, it can feel like what’s in you is now coming out — but it’s all being done unto you. They’re not here. You are the only recipient of your hate.

Does your face look like the one who deserves to have those things said to it? If your reflection were not you, but a different person — would you say you deserve for those hateful things and those angered expressions to be facing you? No. 

More often than not, we can’t express the anger, hurt, and injustice we feel to the people we feel it to in the way we feel it. By understanding the proper ways to approach conflict and dealing with others, we know we can’t just yell in their face. As such, all of the anger we feel stays with us, which drives us to feel like we need to get it out in some way.

Then, everything we can’t say to them, we think. Or we say it out loud to ourselves and pretend we’re saying it to them. Unfortunately, the hate never leaves you. It’s always in your mind, in your heart, and being heard through your ears.

Maybe they are the worst human being you know. Maybe they have treated you so unjustly and have not received any consequences that you can see. Maybe the fire is rising in you to SCREAM at them and swear and tell them everything they are so that you can feel that at least someone gave them what they deserved. But, what about what you deserve?

You don’t deserve to have hate in your heart, even if they deserve to be hated.

They may have been so evil to you in treatment that you know they deserve just the worst — and probably no one would blame you for standing behind that conviction. However, you do not deserve to hear hateful words in your mind and ears constantly. Hate makes the heart sick. It changes your perspective, your world view, and your idea of what is and is not just. 

Once, I was being mistreated by a group of people. I then had a friend tell me, “To them, they’re not wrong though. They think what they’re doing is right.” And it completely broke it open to me. I couldn’t understand how these people could justify treating me this way, until I realized that, yea, they do think they’re right to do so.

A hate-based perspective can justify violence. It can make it feel not just so right, but so necessary. The people who were wrong to you — they have a skewed perspective of what is right and wrong. To them, their violence is justified. 

You can justify your hate too. “They did it first.” “They mistreated me, and I did nothing wrong.” “They’re not facing any consequences.” Unfortunately, thinking like that changes you, too. The most unfortunate thing is not if they mistreat you, but if you let it change you. 

Do not let them do that to you. They don’t get to. They don’t get to have that power over you. You want to say, “screw you”? The biggest “screw you” is to not let them touch who you are as a person. To not let them change your thoughts, your behavior, your words, your gentleness, your kindness. The second you let their hate get inside of you, then you have been affected. They don’t get to do that. 

You don’t deserve to have hate in your heart. Maybe they completely deserve to be hated, by you and others, but you don’t deserve to live with chronic anger, pain, and a feeling of injustice. Most of all, you don’t deserve to feel like a victim. They do not get to victimize you. And that doesn’t come from how they treated you, but rather how you perceive it and how you are effectively changed by it.

They don’t get to take the love that is in you and make it hate. They don’t get to take your sweet words and make them sour. They don’t get to take your peace and make it dis-ease. A lack of ease in you will turn into literal disease — bodily sickness. Remember, hate makes the heart sick. 

So, in a paradoxical way, I advise to not think negative things about them. Do not go through your day thinking “screw them” — just know that the biggest finger you can give is to be at peace. If they don’t get to bother you, that is the strongest stand you can make. But you have to be diligent about it, because it’s easy to slip into hate — especially when we feel personally wronged. 

Thus, you need to catch the negative thoughts you have about them. The labels, the swears, the defenses — you have to let them go. Do not label them bad. Do not imagine yourself telling them off. Do not put yourself on trial in your head and come up for the defense of why they’re bad and you’re good. Just do not think about them.

If you allow yourself to begin dissecting them, and all that is wrong with them, then you are meditating on negativity. Don’t let them do that to you — to your spirit, your heart. Thinking like that will make you sick. And secondly, it could lead you to eventually justify your own violence towards them, or others. Then, you are the same as them. What an injury to you that would be, to be exactly like them. 

I think the most difficult part about not having hate in your heart for someone who you feel personally injured you is that you feel like they got off scot-free. Like they received no consequences. Thus, the sense of injustice drives you to the feeling of necessity that you must hate them so that they experience a consequence. 

Can I tell you something? You are not their executioner. That’s not a role you were burdened with in this lifetime. And it is a burden, even if it temporarily feels like relief. Further, while you may not see it, they are facing consequences. No human being can commit violence — no matter how they justify it — and not feel that on their soul. You are just not required to become the counterforce of evil in order for justice to exist. That’s not your responsibility. Luckily, you don’t have to carry the weight of what becomes of the other person.

Commonly, the biggest consequence is that —because they have to find a way to justify what they did, said, or thought — they keep spiraling down into this perspective of the world that is just so disconnected from reality. Actions have internal consequences — in order to justify wrongdoing time after time, one must arrive to a psychosis-like state. The way someone thinks can infect them so deeply that their mind becomes essentially sick, and that cancer affects everything in their life. They cannot escape themselves — that is their biggest consequence. 

But you can escape them — and you do that by not allowing their way of justifying unkindness, entitlement, or violence to become your way. Because, sooner or later, you would soon arrive at their same destiny.

It is very important to not focus on their consequences. You do not have to exact revenge. The more you think about someone, the more they also infect your world. This doesn’t mean “forget what they did” — but it does mean you don’t have to replay it, imagine what they are becoming, construct narratives about their downfall or “consequences,” mentally argue with them after the fact, or try to complete moral closure in your head. People face their consequences in ways we cannot fully see or control.

Do not let hate get into your heart. Catch those comments you let slip of them. Catch those judgements you make on them. Pause the story when it starts playing in your head. Not because they deserve it, but because you do. To hate someone is infinitely more detrimental than to be hated. 

“From a just perception that what a man believes, knows and thinks is supremely determinative of his demeanour and his cosmology.” A person’s understanding of reality and how the world works, and thus, the way they show up in it, is fundamentally shaped by how they think and what they believe. 

The importance of having the correct belief within you is not based on some arbitrary, intellectual opinion of what is “right,” but because your beliefs determine your character, actions, and entire vision of the world.

Wrong beliefs eventually produce distorted actions and a distorted view of reality, while right beliefs help produce positive living and a grounded understanding of the world. To have hate in your heart is not an act of violence against them, but against yourself. Do not be consumed by judgement, but remain clean in your own actions and heart. 

Ideas are not neutral. What you hold to be true eventually affects who you become. It’s your duty to yourself to protect the truth that shapes your soul and life. Do not let your truth be centered around violence. 

I think this puts the idea very strongly: 

“Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves.” (NIV Luke 17:1)

Life is life. Unfair and undeserved things happen to us all — and yet, enduring it is still better than being the person through whom they come. The hate you put into your environment destroys you more than it ever will anyone else. You don’t deserve that. Do not be your own victim.