There is so much hate in the world.
Yoda taught us about the roots of hate – and where it leads.
I try to hold empathy for those who hate – to recognize the emotional hell they inherited, refurbished, and unwittingly choose to remain trapped in.
The part of us that is a supermonkey is really so limited, so fragile, so vulnerable. So afraid. There’s so much he can’t control and so much chaos in the forest. Trauma holds fast and shapes generations. The flame that burned him once lurks in every glow. Difference, Other-ness, becomes challenging and threatening.
It is too easy to identify with the supermonkey, to believe the stories he tells himself as lies awake at night, hiding in his stone hut from the ominous booms and the enveloping darkness, nursing his wounds and forgetting to dream.
It is too easy to forget that the supermonkey is not the whole story, even when his tales leave him twisted with hate and convinced that his fate is to either rule the forest or be consumed by it.
We are more than the supermonkey.
There are other parts of us, that combine with the supermonkey to produce the full and splendid human being, you and me, with our personalities, histories, powers, and dreams.
Those other parts are rooted in levels of reality far “above” the dimensions of space and time with which we are so familiar.
With which maybe we too often over-identify.
In times like this – when things are happening big and small, when my daily struggles become dwarfed in the rising fog of war, when the supermonkey is poignantly and painfully reminded of just how like a passing cloud in the sky his earthly life is – I must admit, I find it comforting to remember who I really am, and to lean into the parts of my being that no intercontinental ballistic missile or corrupt politician or enemy of any kind can threaten.
It brings me moments of peace that I wish upon those who hate, especially who hate without even knowing the ones they hate. Their hell is the darkest and coldest, warmed only by the anger they can kindle – is it truly a paradox that they are the most deserving of love?