In reading a beautiful post the other day by my dear pal who shared a conversation with another mutual dear pal of ours, I was inspired to look into something more deeply. My friend’s post was about focusing on what is beautiful in life, rather than what is hateful.

Our mutual friend was running for U.S. Congress recently, and had no doubt encountered the strange wall of Hatred that appears to be running rampant in that sector of reality. Not just toward those with differing political viewpoints, yet those who happen to be female.

It is a great irony that the granddaddy of discrimination—hatred—really is nondiscrimatory.

And it got me thinking about this phenomenon called hatred; an old virus that continues to infect those whose emotional immune systems are ignored.

People feel so numb in their lives that they’d rather shock themselves into feeling something, anything, by entertaining hatred—rather than love, passion, healthy emotion, which may involve some grief.

Hatred is a placebo when the broken and frightened heart craves purpose, craves Connection.

It deceives us into uniting around a common passion, though deeply wounded—a very negative one. Yet a bond, a sense of belonging, is created by those who share the same toxic passion.

For many, it’s better than being alone in a world that terrifies them.

I always look at folks who choose hatred as their identity, and their bonding mechanism, as people who are in life’s last ditch effort to find purpose, as they lose their battle against drowning in a churning, frightening sea of invisibility.

Hatred, on the outset, is a seething force that ultimately eats the host who entertains it, from the inside out. Hatred is like a mild acid—at first, it’s an exhilarating tingle on the skin, until the fingers go numb, and a stronger acid must be applied, to get the same tingle.

In the end, hatred burns through every nerve ending we have, leaving us even less able to feel, to connect, to sense our environment—rendering us more cut off, and more alone, than when we started.

Ultimately, those who choose hatred as their passionate connection to purpose, those who fear being alone, end up burning away every ability they have to feel a connection to anyone or anything.

They become a numb island, starving for feeling, unable to feel connected to anything unless a stronger acid is poured. And soon, the acid is so intense, it simply eats through their nerves, through their skin, through their bones, and right through their heart.

Medical studies have been submitted on the effects of hatred. It shortens lifespans, inflames cancer, fuels autoimmune issues, and triggers heart attacks.

Hatred is the drug that kills, that is often mistaken for community, for connection, and it’s most effective camouflage—for righteous purpose.

Yet there is no such thing as righteous hatred. It’s just an acid that will kill every one of us, dissolving us to the core, leaving the shell empty.

Hatred is the armor of anger. Anger is the scaffolding of fear. Fear is the cloak of sadness worn by a heart that feels it shall never be seen, or valued, or known.

Beneath every person who chooses hatred as their mantle, there is a person who is terrified.

Hatred is the national flag for those who are scared; scared the world is changing into something they don’t understand. Scared of people different than they are—and they may not even know who they are. Scared no one ever heard or saw them, so they rage louder and louder and louder.

Hatred. The killer, the national flag of the terrified, the battlecry of those who fear being unseen.

Loving on someone who has chosen hatred, extending kindness to that person, then breaks that cycle. It causes the barometer of need within that person who is clinging to seething hatred as a connection to an ideal—to readjust itself, as they feel TRUE connection, with a human.

Kindness and love are the Cadillac of all connections.

An ideal is hollow compared to the simple understanding another persons extends to our heart, our humanity.

Those who choose hatred often don’t know there are other forms of connection. Of being valued. Of having a voice or finding purpose.

If we, as a society, wish to eradicate hatred, we must begin to see our population. Fully. In all it’s fear and ugliness. And we must be strong enough to see beneath those systematic sets of armor passed down for thousands of years, a set of lies that are supposed to keep us safe.

We must find within ourselves relentless kindness, unyielding compassion, and love that races past conditions.

And we must extend those attributes to those who do nothing to deserve them, expecting nothing but a disarmed bomb in return.

We become the alkaline base to the acid. We become the neutralizer.

Yet many of us house our own wounds, many of those wounds having been burned-in by the very hatred that we seek to extinguish. These wounds sense the hatred around us, and scream at us to stay away, stay safe.

To heal ourselves is to have the the strength, the stamina, and the desire, to help others heal.

To find true connection with ourself is to help others find true connection with themself.

Once we can all feel—once we stop pouring acid on the sensitive ends of our reaching fingers just to feel the tingle of being alive—then the connection of intertwining our fingers becomes the craving.

This is the challenge of hatred. To heal past our own wounds, in order to help others heal past theirs.

Just as we do not give up on those who are addicted to drugs while they purge the toxins from their system, neither should we give up on those who are addicted to the rush of hatred, as they purge the toxin from their system.

Addiction is addiction. And fear is a powerful drug.

Let us heal ourselves, have compassion for ourselves, love ourselves, so that when the time comes and we are called by life to help liberate another from the self-sustaining prison of hatred, we are able to do so.

Because it isn’t a myth that as a society, we are only as emotionally healthy as the person next to us. We will never all be the same. That’s not the nature of living beings. Our experiences differ and shape us accordingly. However, our hearts are all born from the same source, the same light, the same love.

And that is the lighthouse in this fog of chaos that shall keep all of us off the perilous rocks, waiting below to shred the floating underbelly of hope.