Coming closer to the end of one’s tenure in physical life leads that one to consider both past and future and the multiple meanings of both. There isn’t anything unique to that; millions of people who have gone before and who are in similar periods of contemplation have had such thoughts or are now contemplating what and how to face that transition. Then there are the thoughts of sadness for those who are prevented from the luxury of contemplation or who are not wise enough to seize the opportunity to contemplate their various lives.
Love is the spiritual force that drives our contemplations and our hopes that we might add something more that is positive to the world and to those we love. Why is that the motivation? Merely for kind memories after we’re gone? Or, is the existence – virtually universal – of love in the “hearts” of those who know us, now, or who remember us from years prior, but even, somehow, of love we have for children too young to know us, really. Love is more than a vapor that blows this way and that: it is like an abiding, surrounding fluid that is everywhere we look and think. One cannot wash it off.
It can be repelled with hatred, illustrating the force that is love and its strength and simultaneous fragility. Each of us has a responsibility – spiritually – to defend love from the nibbling intrusions of hate. Some become so fearful of the imputed power of hatred that they stop feeling, let alone expressing, love. Yet love is infinitely stronger. Religious explanations of love are somewhat confusing since most are complicated by political or financial power over populations. The confusion has become worse as scientific inquiry has appeared to disprove many religious tenets. This threat to religious infallibility has caused many branches of Judeo-Christianity to soften scripture and history so that modern social justice may be elevated to something religious. True Love is largely left behind. The frequent declaration of God’s love for each of us is disconnected, somewhat, from the universality of love and the earthly, daily battle with hate.
The best expression of love… and the best way to multiply love, is marriage and children. It is a simple, not quite infallible formula that has worked for millennia. It is a formula that, like changing water into wine, changes everything in the worlds of the husband, the wife and the souls entrusted to them as co-creators with God. Love expands in families.
Hatred, on the other hand, usually is not generated inside of families. It steals into families, perhaps because of drugs or alcohol, or because of some human vector that generates unrequited angers or, worse, self-hatred. It spreads. The wise society maintains a social – perhaps religious – infrastructure that can mitigate, if not resolve, familial dysfunction. It would strengthen everyone. It would assure that subsequent generations of citizens will be smarter than the last, and well-balanced and nurturing.
If unchecked, hatred becomes a means of judgement, both of acquaintances and friends or family. Like other addictions, it begins to look for reasons and justifications for itself. Soon, it’s pleasurable and satisfying. Those who don’t hate seem less wise than the one who is smart enough to hate those who deserve to be hated. In short order, correspondence is reduced to only the circle of co-haters – all enjoying the satisfaction of being more discerning than those who float along disregarding the hateful qualities of this or that person, or group, that are so obvious. Society, the civil, unregulated cooperation that reinforces everyone, can break down at this stage. The visible and invisible lines of hateful judgement create unbridgeable chasms that advance some at the expense and pain of others. There is no longer society… only an uneven police state in which most trust very few others.
The aging individual must choose, now, what his frame of mind will be when the hour comes to leave. Leaving immersed in hatred would seem to be the wrong “way” to face whatever comes next, and this should include self-hatred, possibly the most common form of hate. Hating oneself leads to a search for confirmation from others, perhaps from society, that the self-hating individual is correct in his outlook. If he is “confirmed” as a member of a properly hated group, he will then have found a mission to either spread the hate or better define it, or to find a way to correct the reasons or balance the reasons it is hated. Inevitably this “balance” is perceived as an economic one: forcing people who have nothing to do with why a group is hated today, though long dead, to pay reparations to others alive today, who have virtually nothing to do with the hated people, again, long departed. It is illogical in its conception and unfair in execution: a reward for hatred.
It appears that hatred is a personal matter, one that individuals can control or reverse. Historically, however, most starkly described in “1984,” hatred is a political tool. For many movements, for whom to hate is the sea-anchor that keeps them on course. It is part and parcel of psychological warfare where repetition and cross-citation becomes “truth,” not because it is true but, because it is believed. The same process works personally, creating self-hatred. It is all destructive: from simply feeling like a failure, to rejecting opportunities to triumph… to attempting suicide. “Satan” wins.
Some are unable to process love, which is one of the most difficult mental states to overcome. It is the enemy of self-worth or self-esteem. One should not prepare to die feeling this way.
Nor should a nation die in self-hatred. Good national “health” and a good future, depend upon knowledge of real history, good and bad, and accepting that the imperfections of humans have happened, are happening and will happen, and that we are willing to apply steps of improvement to how we act. Nationally, we can do better for ever larger numbers of people… if we believe in our ability to do so. Hating one another, or our nation, or ourselves, is the recipe for failure. Do we know better?