You become what you hate

This is a special time of year in many regards. We're between holidays that are not so important anymore and perhaps the biggest American holiday and the universally Christian holiday of Christmas which is right around the corner. It is fitting, I think, that these all occur when they do, here at the end of the solar year, after the harvest, and in preparation for the retreat before the winter. This is a time of turning inward -- or it should be -- a time of reflection upon who we are, what we believe, and what we are doing.

There's an old mystic's adage that is particularly appropriate given all that I've been posting about lately: "You become what you hate."

Yes, speaking of hate at this time of year seems a bit incongruous, but only at first glance. The world seems to be full of hate these days. It's directed toward all kinds of "others": immigrants, political opponents, particular lifestyles, adherents of other religions ... you name it, there is a good number of people ready, willing, and able to stand up and decry just how evil all those others are, even if loudly decrying, and hating generally, are values we (and more often our religion) proclaim not to have.

Hate -- and it is actual hate in most cases -- is a dangerous emotion, not only because it is inherently destructive, but because of its insidious power to change us in such a fundamental, essential way. Someone who hates invests a lot of time and energy (and given the short spans of our lives, rare and precious resources) in that hate. The object of one's hate plays an essential and central role in our thought, speech, and actions. We are offended by the slightest of details which we come to see as ever more proof of the rightness of our hate. We end up knowing more about what we hate than we know about ourselves.

In the wake of WW2, it was the Communists who reaped our ire. Those God-hating, atheist oppressors and suppressors of freedom. But who is it these days turning on whistleblowers, passing legislation to rescind basic rights and persecuting dissenters? Oh, we still claim to love God and can't reaffirm enough our religious values, but ignore every precept which that rebellious Nazarene carpenter put so much trust in. We hate Muslims, those bellicose terrorists who want to turn the clocks back to the Middle Ages. But who is it that places religious values above so-called democratic ones and who worship a constitution that is centuries old itself? In place of the KGB which we held high as the prime example of suppression of freedom, we have the NSA and CIA who can't pry broadly and deeply enough into our own lives. In the place of humane values of community and cooperation, we have raised the values of competition and money to religious ideals.

It's not surprising, at least not to me, that we have come this far. And, it is even less surprising that most people I know would argue that I couldn't possibly be speaking to them. But I am. The change from one to the other is slow and subtle, but it's apparent nonetheless. The mystics were right then, and they're still right today: you become what you hate.