Can You Do This Without Hate?

There are ways to disagree without losing our humanity

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

— Martin Luther King

As I walked out of a class at the YMCA in Sarasota a few weeks ago, a woman I’d never met before struck up a conversation. She told me that a kind and talented instructor had just died, and shared how much she would miss her teaching. With a pained expression, she added that she’d been losing so many friends and family recently it was overwhelming. Her cousin had died just the week before. She looked weary with grief, and I offered my condolences as we walked toward our cars. Then she added, “The only bright spot for me right now is that Trump is back in office.”

My chest tightened. The empathy I’d been offering soured, as if a recent meal was starting to churn my stomach. I must have looked awkward to this stranger as I struggled to regain my social equilibrium. One minute we were just two human beings witnessing mortality, acknowledging the vast losses that underpin daily existence. The next moment, a chasm opened between us and we stood on opposite sides of a political reality that seems to grow wider every day. But now I have to hate you, a small, unbidden voice whispered in my mind.

Reflexive hate is scary because it happens so quickly. Though I’ve been practicing Buddhism for decades and have heard teachings about hatred again and again, I hardened right up with tribal revulsion: You’re wrong! You’re not on my team. And this has become our cultural norm. On social media, on TV, and even in casual conversation it’s common to hear people calling each other, or whole groups, names: evil, inhuman, diabolical, cruel, idiotic. In fact, spouting invective is often what drives the likes and follows, shoots up the ratings.

Sometimes I feel as if we’re starting to resemble the creatures in the iconic Star Wars bar scene. “He doesn’t like you,” a man says to Luke Skywalker. “I’m sorry,” Luke replies, turning away. “I don’t like you either,” the man adds, menacingly. In seconds, lightsabers are drawn, arms are severed. There’s a similar transitive property that tacitly underpins our discourse these days. “Well, I know you hate these people so I’m justified in hating you.” But, of course, this simple arithmetic of animosity just leads to more hate. How does this ever stop?

In Buddhism, hatred is one of the three poisons, also called the “three-fold fires,” along with greed and ignorance. Hatred, or anger, is described as an out of control blaze, burning everything in its path. Holding on to hatred has been likened to clutching a hot coal, or taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Teaching after teaching warns that the first person who is hurt by hatred is always the one who hates; those who dwell in hatred pay the biggest price. Also, it’s a losing proposition. As the Buddha said unequivocally 2500 years ago: “Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By compassion alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law.”

The paradox is that it can feel good to hate, at least initially. The heat and light of hatred’s blaze are intoxicating, and give us the illusion of being powerful, especially when we imagine we can control it. Hatred gets us “fired up,” energized. It’s a kind of jet fuel that we use to galvanize ourselves into action. But, like any kind of combustible, it’s also highly caustic and dangerous. Even as it’s spurring us on, taking us to new heights of self-righteousness, it’s corroding our skin, and more perniciously, our hearts.

How can we motivate ourselves in this difficult time without resorting to hatred? How can we stay true to our values, take effective action and not give in to the temptation to hate all the “others” who don’t see things our way? The answer lies, I think, in recognizing the commonality of our suffering. When Wordsworth reflected on his brother’s death in a shipwreck he wrote, “A deep distress hath humanized my soul.” Tragedy humbles us, humanizes us, forces us to recognize that we all, regardless of politics or status, are subject to the vagaries of existence.

Dropping the self-righteous indignation, the insistence on “us” and “them” is actually aligning ourselves with a deeper reality. “If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other,” said Mother Theresa. We are all vulnerable; we will all die. Compassion can be highly motivating, and doesn’t come at the cost of coiled tension in our bodies, the blowback of rage, the hatred hangover.

The cultivation of goodwill and empathy are considered the “antidote” to hatred in Buddhism, which can lead us back to a basic sense of peace and harmony. This is not to be confused with passivity. We are still dedicated to working for the good. But we can be much more impactful if we’re not hamstrung and exhausted, stuck in the mire of vitriol, spinning our wheels in hate.

Back to my roiling mind in the parking lot. I’d become wary of talking politics at the Y in the weeks before Inauguration. After working out next to women wearing Trump sequin outfits or “I’m a Trump girl, deal with it!” T-shirts, I’d decided to keep my progressive beliefs to myself. But standing face-to-face with this woman who’d seemed so relatable just a minute before, I decided to lean into curiosity. I told her that I was from Massachusetts and had more liberal politics than she did, but truly wanted to understand why she was happy that Trump was back in office.

We talked for a while, standing there under the beating Florida sun, tired and sweaty from our workout. Not surprisingly, we hold very different ideas about where our shared country should be heading. We could both agree that Red Dye #3 should be banned, though not on much else. But we took the time to be respectful and hear each other out. As she spoke, I heard the undercurrents of fear and anxiety about this pivotal moment in our world, a time of unprecedented change. In simple terms, we have chosen different solutions to address the uncertainty of our era: her allegiance to Trump makes her feel safe, while I find him and his administration terrifying. But this basic human desire to be at ease, to be well, to be protected— yes, I can relate to that, I can understand that.

We did not resolve our national rift, and we will not meet for coffee. But I do think we will both remember the conversation. “Thank you for talking to me,” she said. “So many of my friends won’t even speak to me about politics anymore.” And I took this to mean thank you for your civility, another place where we found common ground. We knew we couldn’t do much more than talk and listen to each other. We weren’t going to change each other’s minds. But it felt like a small step toward creating a path forward that may one day move ourselves, and our riven society, toward peace.