End discrimination. Hate everybody.
Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged.
Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you
don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Oooh, I really hate you, monkey-face!
Gee, when I was in Junior High School, I really, really hated Sara
Horton. I hated her because even though I thought she was fat and ugly, she was
popular. And in Junior High School, popularity means power. She and her gaggle
of friends had resorted to calling me "monkey-face." In fact, they taunted me relentlessly with that name, at any opportunity. Of course at the
tender age
of 13, when my hormones were doing somersaults, my self-esteem was questionable and all I really wanted out of
life was to learn something and when not learning make some friends. With the
moniker "monkey-face," applied to me by no less than one of the school's most
popular girls, I was, to the school's social-climbers, like kryptonite to
Superman.
My revenge was sweet, however, but took a long time. By the end of our Senior
year of High School, I was already driving to the Big City on the weekends and
partying (and taking members of the social "A-list" with me) and Sarah Horton
was fatter and more vindictive than ever, and sadly this only got her invited to
the local B-parties. As competitive as High School is from a social standpoint,
as young people grow and change, I found that being interesting and funny got me
a lot farther than being hateful and viciously competitive. And to think about
it, yeah, I did have a kinda monkey-face when I was a youngster. But I
changed a lot between 13 and 16.
Quotations about hatred.
As I prepared for this writeup I knew what I wanted to say but because I'm so
self conscious I wanted to start with some bright, witty quotes,
as I often do, rather than a lede of my own writing. Which led me to the last
of the quotes above. It was like a message from a deep, vast mysterious
all-knowing voice: There before me were eight simple words that answered my
question. They're from Ralph Waldo Emerson. So I'm going to leave the quotes
in the order I initially chose to place them, but address them below backwards,
from bottom to top.
Hate as poison of one's mind.
A close friend of mine who's been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for more
years than I've been drinking alcohol once offered me a pearl of wisdom from
AA's vast fountain of pearls of wisdom: "Hate (or worry, or jealousy, etc.) is
just allowing something to occupy space in your mind rent-free." Easier said
than done; but doable. There's a parallel between the teachings of Buddhism I've
been studying and many of AA's "gee I shoulda thought of that" simple answers to
complicated questions.
The third quote hereinabove (multiple-lines) is from the Sutta Nipata, a
book of Buddhist wisdom. Would that we could, with these words always in mind,
go about our lives, the world would be a
much nicer place to live in.
Although I'm a Buddhist, it took a Google search to find a piece
of Buddhist writing that contained the word "hatred;" and I couldn't find
anything in a cursory search that contained the outright word "hate." The
Buddhists obviously have no time to discuss hatred. I know why - we seek
simplicity and beauty and love in its purest state. For years before I took
Buddhism seriously, my ability to judge people was often hindered by my personal
habit of trusting people until they give me a reason not to be trusted. I
found myself liking people until they gave me a reason not to be liked. By now, you're probably assuming that I was clueless, or had not a whit of common
sense. Kinda. Let's suffice it to say that I've suffered the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune at the hands of less-than-genuine individuals more often
than I care to admit.
Hate in the workplace.
Funny, one of the ways I found out about E2 was by Googling "restaurant
customers." One of the results was Sneff's fine writeup Ten things I
hate about restaurant customers. All my Buddhist teachings about "love, not
hate" went right out the window as I clicked eagerly on the link. I wanted to
know what made someone else in my business as irate as I about the idiots
among the otherwise delightful population we call our customers.
Now, thankfully, I enjoy my job. Otherwise I'd do something else. In the
writeup bad tippers in restaurants, noder Cordelia points out that "Nine times out
of ten, the servers who griped the loudest about poor tippers were also the
poorest servers. The ones who, if you had more than enough servers, you'd be
happy to lay off." How true. How many times have I heard servers talk among
themselves, "Oh, I hate them; it's your turn to wait on them." Gee,
there's a lot of hatred among restaurant workers. If you doubt me, consult
www.stainedapron.com. It's a
collection of stories from restaurant people who really ought to choose another
line of work. Brace yourself; some of the stuff contained on that site made me
gag.
The most hated guy in the world ca. 1974
But I digress. Now back to the issue at hand. Back when I was 12 and daily
falling prey to Sarah Horton and her gang, I thought that I was just the most
unpopular, saddest guy in the universe. I had friends; some of whom went as far
as to instruct me to ignore the taunting. Then, I witnessed what was up
until that time the greatest public humiliation endured by any person in history
(or so said Walter Cronkite; and he was second in importance only to God, so I guessed it was
true). The President of the United States of America resigned his job.
Nixon told the American public that it was for the good of
the nation and in the interest of healing that he resign.
My mother spat venom at the
television set "... oh yeah, so you won't have all your dirty laundry aired out
in an impeachment hearing!" My mother hated Dick Nixon. In fact, when my
father voted for him in 1968, (and being the upstanding, honest soul he always
was, he told her despite having an inkling what the consequences would
be) my mother didn't speak to him for an entire two weeks. Later on I discovered
that, more than the principle of voting Republican when you're registered
Democrat, my mom didn't know what she'd do if her friends in the Unitarian
church found out that my dad had voted for the guy that she and some other
Unitarians wrote hate-mail to.
I watched the television closely. I read the text of Nixon's speeches over
and over. And in my mind and my heart I thought "wouldn't it be awful to be
him right about now." Dyed-in-the-wool Republicans were on TV and in the
press howling about the smear that he'd brought upon the Republican party. And I
needn't say that the Democrats were having a field day. I'd hazard a guess
Ralph Nader took copies of the New York Times chronicling Nixon's
resignation to bed with him and masturbated nightly for at least a
month.
The second quote hereinabove was uttered by Dick Nixon, on the occasion of a
talk given to White House Staff and workers, from Secretary of State all the way
down to the janitorial staff, they all were there, in a little room in the White
House. That speech was Nixon's opportunity to thank them, and answer for them
the question, "what does it feel like to be you right about now?" They're
Nixon's own words, not the ones so often attributed to Nixon but actually coined
by Theodore Roosevelt, to whom Nixon gave credit in the very same speech, "The
greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes
when you're really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when
sadness comes. Because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever
know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain."
It was with those words in mind that I felt sorry, a deep sadness, for this
man. Years later, when his beloved Pat died, again I thought of this brilliant
man who endured the hatred of so many people. The only President who enters a
room and instead of people murmuring "he used to be President" they say "oh,
there's the guy who resigned."
I could explore the tepid, murky waters of the subject: "Who was worse for
the country, Nixon or Dubya?" but that's out of the scope of
this writeup.
In closing...
Now, finally, we get to a quote from Elle Eden an artist and wordsmith with
a sharp tongue and sharper wit. Wouldn't it make a great bumper sticker? I was
surprised to have found it, because when ignorant people malign someone because
of their race or sex, or sexuality for that matter, in my presence, and then
give me the elbow, or the "wink, wink, nod, nod" I always give the same answer.
"I don't make distinctions between black people or white people, gay people or
straight people; I solved that a long time ago when I decided to hate
everybody!" That usually shuts 'em up; unless of course, they're from the Ku
Klux Klan, but then again, nobody's ever "come out" to me in my lifetime about
being a Kluxer. My religion tells me that I shouldn't hate members of the
Ku Klux Klan; but I'm afraid that I'm not quite that saintly. But when I go back
to what I said about hatred of things merely being poisonous thoughts occupying
your mind rent-free, it all falls in place. It's not up to me to hate the
Kluxers. It's not up to me to hate people who kill other people. It's not up to
me to hate people who hate other people. 'Cause until my own backyard's
in neat and tidy order, why should I be bothered investing so much emotional
energy in someone else's backyard, eh?
SOURCES:
Buddhist Quotes:
http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/resources/buddhist_quotes.html
Laura Moncur's Motivational Quotations:
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2617.html
Quotegarden.com:
http://www.quotegarden.com/hate.html
Hatequest 2007