Why Hate?
“Hate is an oil lamp that shines light on the parts of myself that I haven’t yet accepted—the parts that are flawed, the parts that are vulnerable.”
One Wednesday, I sat with my friends at our usual table for lunch. Fifteen minutes in, I couldn’t help but point out the messy eater a few feet away. It was so unsightly that I told my friends I lost my appetite. “You’re such a hater!” they said. That’s the adjective that we love the most: hater. Isn’t it wrong to be a hater? Since kindergarten, my teachers have always maintained that we should never garner hate, but kindness instead. But then what happens to the emotion of hate we carry inside? What do we do with it? Is it okay to even have it, or does feeling hate automatically make us bad people? Why should we hate? What good is it for me to be a hater?
In truth, hate is the most shameful component of my personality; it’s an oil lamp that ruthlessly casts a spotlight on the darkest parts of my unconscious without offering any warmth. When I sat with my friends for lunch that day, a few more drops of oil were added to my lamp. It burned slowly and dimly at first, but with each drop of judgment, it grew brighter and stronger. Hate, in all its intensity, shines a light on my insecurities. When I judged that stranger for being sloppy, I saw myself in their messy position, and I feared it. When I grow frustrated at someone else’s perceived flaws, it’s because I’m unable to confront my own. The oil lamp burns brighter not because I truly despise the person in front of me, but because I can’t help but project my own struggles onto them. Hate is an oil lamp that shines light on the parts of myself that I haven’t yet accepted—the parts that are flawed, the parts that are vulnerable.
However, I’m not the only one who can see this oil lamp. The lamp glows brighter and spreads farther with every drop of oil, letting more people know the emotions I hold are present. It is the light’s nature to leak out, exposing its presence to those around me. It stays lit, letting people sense my judgment and discomfort despite trying to mask it. In its unrelenting brightness, my lamp forces me to confront the fact that my hate isn’t a private burden—it’s a public affair. It’s so intense that it overshadows the genuine person cowering behind the lamp. Without a doubt, the sloppy eater caught a glimpse of the lamp’s flame, and they wouldn’t bother to see who was holding it. In this way, my hate doesn’t just affect me; it alters the dynamics of my relationships. It colors the way others perceive me and, in turn, how I perceive them.
As the lamp grows brighter, so does my awareness. The more oil I add to the lamp, the better I can navigate my own thoughts. It’s impossible to conceal without blowing the flame out, which I cannot do, as I deny a part of myself in doing so. Instead, I must learn to manage my lamp’s intensity and understand the oil being added. It’s a guide telling me that something is out of place, illuminating the cracks in my own psyche. It shows me the areas I need to work on and areas where I need to heal. And in that sense, my oil lamp doesn’t just burn for the sake of burning. It burns to guide me toward mental clarity.
The acuity that hate provides me can be described as a graft. In horticulture, grafting permits the growth of one plant through another. Hate is a grafting process that allows for personal growth. When I hated the messy eater next to me that day, I sensed a breach of my morals and my identity. I saw myself in their position, shattering the perfect image I had of myself in my mind. I realized the oil lamp inside me burst into flames so strong that it was scarring my subconscious. I needed a graft in order to heal the burns they left. In recognizing this, I was given a chance to reflect, change, and grow. Like a bone grafting procedure that a surgeon does, hate provides to me a way out of long-standing internal flaws. It motivates me to address the issues that caused the hate in the first place.
Yet there is always the potential for rejection, as is true for all grafts, botanical, surgical, and theoretical. Instead of dissecting my hate, my hate could swallow me whole. My subconscious could reject the graft and grow sick from it. The graft could become the source of unnecessarily excruciating pain. It would be easier to reject it and keep to what I know rather than to force myself to grow, leaving myself in a constant state of purgatory. I wouldn’t want to accept that there is something fundamentally wrong with my subconscious when a light shines on my flaws. Therefore, I realize that a graft is not a guaranteed success. Feeling hate does not guarantee that I will mature as a person. As the body’s cells must cater to a surgical graft, it’s crucial that I leverage my thoughts to work with hate in order to overcome my internal struggles. Ultimately, it’s up to me to accept the graft.
As the oil lamp burns and I accept the graft, I recognize that hate is not an emotion to be shunned away. So why do I hate? It is an opportunity for me to change. Nurturing hate is an asymptotic journey drawing me closer and closer to the best version of myself. However dim it may be, the oil lamp will always inch me closer to my best, and I will always be working to integrate my graft more seamlessly. Even though it is undetectable to those around me, I can only hope that others can see the effort I make to accept it. With every cell of my body, I strive to harness the healing powers of my graft instead of letting it inflict pain onto me, reducing the blazing oil lamp to a small flicker in the process. However, I realize that no matter how much I grow, my ideal self remains just beyond my grasp, the lamp’s flame serving me as a reminder that perfection is a moving target. Yet, it’s the pursuit of this unattainable goal that drives me forward. While the lamp illuminates the worst parts of myself, it inspires me to walk a path toward mental clarity. In the end, hate is neither good nor bad. It’s whatever I make of it.