Have you ever been hated? As how one defines a word is paramount to actual communication, let's all begin on the same playing field.

Merriam-Webster describes hate as:

1 a: intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b: extreme dislike or antipathy : loathing hate of hard work>2: an object of hatred hate had been big business - F. L. Paxson>

Now with that said, I'll ask the question again.  Have you ever been hated?  I know for a fact that I have.  I have been hated so much, that one of those people who has hated me, has actually written it down and put it out there for the world to see. And he's not the first person to hate me; on the contrary.  I have learned to live with hate.  I think that hate is something few people really get to feel.  I've had people hate me for things I've got no choice over, like my race.  I've had people hate me over things I had to disclose to them before they hated me, like my sexuality.  These I can deal with.  I chalk it up to fear, ignorance, and brain washing of the most basic kind. But there is a different type of hate that was for me, much harder to get past.  It's the hate that comes, not from strangers, but from people who know you.  People who have made a decision to hate you based off of their interaction with you.  That's a separate kind of hate all together.

I remember a conversation I had with myself when I was younger.  I made up in my mind that I would be strong enough to be hated by people.  What a twisted thing for a young teenager to make a decision about, but I remember making it.  It's amuses me the way the universe works.  It gives us answers before we even know to ask the question. 

I decided at a young age, that hate was not the opposite of love.  There is truth to that saying that there is a thin line between love and hate.  I would go further to say that line does not exist.  The very act of loving, and hating, reminds us of our connection with people.  It entangles our existences together.  For what you pay attention to, you are conscious of.  What you are conscious of, is what you become.  There is no mystery that we often become like the ones we love AND the ones that we hate.  Transversely, it is also no mystery that we often hate and love, the ones that remind us of ourselves. 

The only person I have ever sustained a hatred for in my life, I can say with good conscience, is myself.  An older me, hated a younger me.  I hated how powerless the younger me was.  In my clouded understanding I felt that child was not adequate, and I hated that about myself.  This hatred was so great, that I actually let it manifest into action.  I began to transform myself, not from a whole place, but from a place of hurt and confusion.  My goal, was to change who I was, and wipe out all existence that a powerless, inadequate me ever existed.  I went so far as to systematically destroying every picture I could find of myself before a certain age.  I decided I was strong now, and I would have no evidence of a child who couldn't look out for and protect himself. 

I'm not so naive as to think that racism doesn't still exist, but the overt acts, for me, are rarely experienced.  For me it matters how you interact and relate with me, but rarely can someone hide ignorance within interaction.  Action gives light to unseen things, and creates a relationship between the actor, and the acted upon.  In my own acting out of my own self-hatred, I began to see the truth of my relationship with myself.  Irrational thought formed irrational action, and it was only in seeing the irrational action, that I became aware on a conscious level of my irrational thoughts toward myself. 

It caused me to reevaluate my understanding of what hate is.  I've come to define hate as a distorted expression of love that comes from an illogical knowledge of oneself.  Love, is about connection, and to hate someone is to strengthen your ties that connect you.  To hate someone is to acknowledge fear, anger or injury in your life, and use those same emotions to bind yourself to the object of your hatred.  Of course it's much easier to say than to do, but it does not matter what anyone does to you, none of those emotions can exist without your permission in your own life.

I have to admit, that since the election, I have only spent a few days thinking about President Elect Barack Obama.  Although it dominated my mind before the election, knowing he was elected freed up both mental and emotional space in my life to attend to other things.  Recently I saw his interview with Barbara Walters in which she pointed out a newspaper with threats against his life from a white supremacist group.  They hate him, and probably spend every waking hour thinking about him.  Their hatred of him, binds them to him, and perpetuates the cycle.

To hate someone, is to expose your nasty little secrets to them, your place of vulnerability.  When we hate, it means we still have broken and hurt places in our lives that still cause us pain and all of those places are fully exposed to the one we manifest our hate for.  I wish I could say I've never done anything to someone that warrants their hate, but it's not true.  Regardless of whether or not the hatred is "warranted", for me, being strong enough to be hated means taking what you see, those vulnerable hurt places, and not using it against them.  It means listening to the venom in their words towards you, and only hearing hurt, pain and confusion.  It means standing in condemnation until they are able to work through those thoughts of you, and those thoughts of themselves.

President Elect Obama, has not, and cannot return hatred with hatred.  He must be strong enough to be hated.  As he stands in that place, things that previously were hidden begin to be revealed to our nation and community.  Where many thought racism and discrimination was a thing of the path, their acting out of hate lets us know that our country still has a place of healing, and hurt that we must deal with.  The GLBT community has recently suffered from what I consider to be a crime of hate.  It is our responsibility to stand and be strong enough to be hated to effect change in our country.  It is very easy for me to get angry, but I am trying to see the places in our country that need to be healed, and not return hatred with hatred.

In any case, I am not asking anyone to be the martyr or be stricken with that syndrome.  We must not just stand in a place and be hated, but we must be active in our response of love.  Hate has already tied us together, but we must strive for the higher course and replace that connection with one based on love.  Without trying to sound Cliché', love is the highest of emotions.  It is the light from which the colors of all other emotions flow.  In love, we stay connected.  We acknowledge pain, and hurt, and disappointment, and we move to a place of healing.  Love helps us live in the now.  Love helps us remember that what we do to each other, we do to ourselves.   In love, you still may scream, you still may yell, you still may fight, but you do so in a way that you stay on the path enlightenment. 

Have you ever had to work through your own hate to get to a place of love on the other side?  How were you able to do that?