Love or Hate! I Choose Not To Hate!

Throughout life, we are faced with choices; choice between ethical vs. unethical, honesty vs. dishonesty, deceit vs. trust, righteousness vs. wrongdoing, and of course one recently popularised love vs. hate. Everyone liked, appreciated and clapped when Rahman said, “He chose love over hate and so he is there”. We all know that not everyone who chooses love over hate will have an Oscar moment! But, what Rahman said at the Oscars’ deserves a thought

Is it easy to choose love over hate as Rahman sounded?

Many spiritual books and leaders of yesterday and today preach to choose love over hate which almost everyone of us (barring a few exception) find difficult or sometimes impossible to choose! Why? Perhaps choosing love over hate is something that a person who is engaged in a philosophical and spiritual vocation may find easier than what most of us are engaged in doing (earning livelihood), as part of our working lives. I have talked and self analysed and found that the choice that exists within us is not “always” what we understand to be between love and hate!. Many complain that their love never got returned with love and their "so called love' always ended in acrimony, bitterness, regret, and even hatred. Strange as it might seem, we do sometimes manage to find hate even in what we believe to be love, as if there were nothing but only hate, fear, anger and pain that rules the course of struggle for our existence.

Let me ask a question; Do we really make a conscious choice or we try to believe, that we have chosen our emotions or more literally our emotion choose us. The answer more likely to be is that our “so called choice” was not a our choice at all. More often than not we don't really choose to be angry, hurtful, resentful, or hateful. Yet we tend to get consumed by these emotions. We behave like "...helpless tools of nature" (Dr S. Radhakrishnan, Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita).

However, nature still gave us the final choice. Nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow. (David Seabury Psychologist)

What do you think of the statement “the absence of hatred is not, an indication of a love” I too, have learned through my contemplation it is in many ways the antithesis of it. We must fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that ensures our spiritual defeat ( Dr Radhakrishnan).

Many of us have seen or have a popular poster or a powerpoint presentation saying;

“People are illogical, unreasonable and self-centred.

Love them anyway."

"Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway."

Maybe when we begin with loving people anyway, putting our hurt and anger and angst aside, which is when we are able to give the world the best we have. Often we can't always choose love when our reflex is to hate. But we can at least choose not to hate; we can try to be forgiving, to be compassionate. We may not have the arc lights on us and a televised audience of Oscar’s, but perhaps, when our time is up, we can look back and say to ourselves: `I could choose between love and hate, and I chose not to hate.