It is impossible to hate anyone that you understand, because the second that you understand someone you are making links with them, connections between the way they act and the way you’ve acted. Connections between their internal motivations, their hopes and dreams, their relationships, and yours. It is this concept that gives me this incredibly idealistic and probably naïve belief in people and their ability to just ... be humans: empathy.
We all have the ability to understand each other because of our common humanity. Some people you have to try incredibly hard to understand; others you just naturally connect with so deeply that you know how they are going to react to any given circumstance. Then there are people who won’t try to understand others because it offers justification for the way someone interacts with you; if it’s not a positive interaction, then it can be daunting to understand why it was that way. Then there are people who are just so optimistic and idealistic that they can’t help but spend hours in other people’s heads, trying to work out the mechanics of human beings until they come to the conclusion that everybody is inherently good.
I’m one of that last kind of people. I’ve resolved that it’s not necessarily a good thing.
When I was about six, I remember having the biggest breakdown psychologically. I was in my bedroom one night, I don’t know what I was thinking about, but I somehow decided that everyone in the entire world could be a robot and I would never know, because I could never see what was really going on in their head. Everything I saw was a façade, every action a performance of the ideal person. It’s all very Hamlet. But as a little kid the thought isolated me and I became very locked up in my own head, until I decided the best way of being a human was to trust the fact that there was some spirituality (not necessarily religious) that linked us all and that was when I promised myself that I would always remember that all people are people are people are people.
Not robots.
The thing is, it makes it very difficult to hate others. This is a good thing in a way, hate is soul-destroying and just generally disgusting. But it’s easy. And if you don’t naturally like someone, the thing about being incredibly empathetic is that you just keep working away to find something beautiful and good about them. Sounds like a good thing, right? I suppose it is but just ... once you understand them, you connect with them, you know how they’d feel if you did something that might hurt them, and you just generally end up hating yourself that little bit more.
Hence why not being empathetic is easy – you then have justification for not being good to people all the time.
I think you have to be a very, VERY good person to be able to empathise with others and not end up feeling kind of shit, just generally.
Alright that’s my philosophising for the night, Lox just got back from the Gold Coast and I’m super pumped to talk to her for a bajillion years. So I’m going to leave you now. Look forward to more philosophising in the future.
Love you like being human or something.
x
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