“We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo, a comic strip character.
Is it possible to have compassion for someone we totally hate? Do we play no part in the relationship with our arrogant boss who regularly puts us down? Can we ever forgive a parent who has virtually changed the course of our life for the worse? Can someone with radically different religious convictions ever be our friend? These are some of the big questions that are hard to readily answer. Indeed some of us can barely get through our day without stewing over the obnoxious driver who cut us off in traffic let alone answer these big questions. We live in such polarized times that it only feels right to either love or hate. Not going to extremes may feel weak and defenseless. Yet aren’t these the very questions, whether we hide from them or not, that need to be answered? Indeed, our personal growth and maturity depends on our being able to respond to them in complex ways. In fact, it takes greater courage to put love and hate together than to keep them apart.
Why love those whom we hate?
Clearly there is no value in putting the rose-colored glasses on and smiling away our anguish to appear to love someone we hate. True compassion is not an act; it is the result of painful soul-searching honesty. When we look for the good in someone we spurn, we have to ask ourselves why we hate that person so much. Sometimes we detest a person because we don’t want to see, after all is said and done, how much we are like them. Some aspect in them is intolerable in ourselves and hating another is easier to swallow than hating ourselves. We may hold contempt for another to distract ourselves from our own failings. Sometimes we don’t want to see our part in another abusing us because we would rather play the helpless role and wait for someone else to make us safe. Other times we hold grudges toward people who have harmed us and write them off because we want to deny how much power they still have over us. Sometimes hard limits as to when and how we see a loved one are required for safety.
However, in general, to totally deny a loved one’s presence inside ourselves through cutting them off only hurts ourself. As the sage said, “When you seek revenge, build two graves.” Others of us hide from people who are different from us because we want to hold on to our oversimplified views of life and not examine our own complexity. Indeed, none of these awarenesses are easy to swallow. They’re terrifying! That’s why we hate. On the other hand, were we to love those whom we hate, or even attempt to, we would reclaim dark aspects of ourselves and transform them. Such miracles are rare, precious and sometimes inscrutable.
How can we forgive someone who has hurt us?
Putting aside hatred for an enemy is no easy matter. It is a form of forgiveness. Some of us can only do so after our enemy has died. However some of us don’t have to wait that long. A friend of mine once said, “There is no such thing as an enemy out there. The enemy is really the stranger in ourselves we haven’t gotten to know.” Forgiving an enemy means we are willing to fully repair the damage inside ourselves made by another and move on with our own lives. It means we are not allowing that person to have power over us any longer and live within us. We become totally responsible for our own safety and happiness. This is easier said than done and often can’t be done alone, although the decision to forgive is an alone decision.
Putting aside hatred for an enemy is no easy matter. It is a form of forgiveness.Some of us may simply require our religious faith to begin the healing process. Others often require a team of helpers—trusted friends, professional help, support groups, body workers, and some form of spiritual direction—to really be rid of our hatred. Typically we begin to forgive when safety is restored to our lives. When we know how to protect ourselves—knowing when to say “yes” and when to say “no”—and having the facility to do so is often the beginning of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a complex grieving process that separates us from our perpetrators. It is only through real separation that we can begin to accept togetherness with a loved one who has harmed us. Forgiveness at best is often bittersweet. The feelings we have towards another who has harmed us is never as good as the feelings we might have had were the harm to have never occurred. However the feelings we have towards ourselves for loving someone we hate is sublime and a profound passage to maturity.
What stops us from loving someone we hate?
Sometimes we’re unaware of our resentments toward a loved one. We may say we had the perfect childhood and were raised by exceptional parents. Yet today we may withdraw from and resent our own children for the demands they make on us in our lives as parents. We may claim to be over and moved on from an old lover who has done us wrong. Yet we are constantly comparing our new partner to our prior flame. Some of us never transform hatred because it lives unconsiously inside us beyond our awareness. Others of us enjoy vilifying that boss in our life that won’t give us a raise or that foreigner who can’t speak English and is hard to understand.
Some of us simply want no responsibility for ourselves. Little do we know that if we even looked for another job or took that class on cultural diversity our boss would appear more likeable to us, and we would find something very much in common with a newcomer from another land and feel less alone. We may withhold love from people we dislike because we secretly see ourselves as undeserving and unworthy. The secret we keep from ourself is that the public image we portray is only a facade.
Finally, there are those of us who are too scared to bridge the gap of forgiveness. We may say, “Well I’m waiting for so-and-so to make the first move. After all I’m not the one who screwed up our relationship.” Some of us hide behind the cloak of self-righteousness. What we are truly scared of is moving beyond our petty differences and actually enjoying a real emotional connection with someone we used to hate. Hate keeps an imbalance going; love evens things up and allows us to receive caring. Some of us look for excuses to hate. Even when there is abundant evidence for another doing wrong to us we find it unthinkable to “turn the other cheek” and walk up to our enemy and say, “Hi, I think it is time for us to mend some fences.” Obviously not all fences can be mended but the mere act of approaching an enemy and seeing if some mending can occur is healing in itself. Some of us are just too proud to heal. Which is another way of saying we are scared to be loved.
Whether we’re living in la-la land about our resentments, focusing on others as a distraction from ourselves, or hiding from love, we are all essentially staying with negative patterns because they are familiar to us. As Sheldon Kopp, a famous psychoanalyst, once said, “We prefer the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.” Loving someone we hate would risk losing our connection to misery and those who are miserable with us, as that is all we know.
Story of transformation
Needless to say, I don’t believe in staying with the familiar or even with the comfortable. If we are not reinventing ourselves throughout our lives we are dying. Consider reading, I Thought We Would Never Speak Again by Laura Davis. Finally let me leave you with a story:
A man was having a very hard time forgiving his father. His dad nothing to do with him throughout his life and now that his dad was dying the man was being asked to reconsider having a relationship with his dad. When he was young, his dad told him he didn’t feel worthy enough to be his dad and felt his son was in better hands with being taken care of by his mother alone.
The man didn’t know what to feel toward his dad. He didn’t feel he had a dad. Initially when he got the call from his lost dad he wanted to hang up. He wondered what was in it for him to get together with this stranger who calls himself “dad.” He was much more settled into hating his dad or at least ignoring him. The dad proposed they do a camping trip in the Rocky Mountains. It would be their last hurrah and a chance to heal. He said he wanted to see his son before he died. At first the man said, “No” thinking it better to let sleeping dogs lay. His dad said, ” Be a man and let’s face this together.” So the man decided to meet his father for the first time simply out of bravado since he couldn’t stand the thought of his dad being more of a man than he was. After all, he hadn’t abandoned his kids like his dad had.
Their trip was inauspicious and uncomfortable. Except for one incident. Once as the father and son were climbing a steep slope that overlooked an amazing valley, the dad lost his grip and began to tumble down the slope to the very edge, which had a huge drop-off. The son ran down to help his dad who now was holding on for dear life with his hands on the edge of a precipice. There was no rope to keep the dad from falling. The son thought if he helped his dad he might not have the strength to lift him up and they might tumble together and perish in the deep canyon below. Time stood still. The man entertained thoughts of just letting his dad fall. After all he had never saved him and his dad was dying anyway. The moment of crisis came. His dad yelled out, “Son, go get help. I can hang on.” The man realized that his dad was asking him to let him die as they both knew he couldn’t hang on long enough. Something amazing happened. Suddenly the man decided to take all the pain and anger he had toward his dad and make a force out of it to rescue his dad. Immediately he lunged forward with amazing strength he never knew existed, held on for dear life and pulled his dad to safety on the awaiting mesa. Exhausted, they both wept tears of relief and forgiveness. Nothing needed to be said between them after that.
At his dad’s funeral just weeks after this incident, the man realized that even one act of love can completely change life forever. That was all the love he ever needed.
John H. Driggs, was a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in St. Paul and co-author of Intimacy Between Men (Penguin Books, 1990).
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