Hate is a strong word.
At least that’s what my grandfather would always say whenever we casually muttered the word in response to seeing something green like spinach on our dinner plates. He’d also catch us saying it towards people, as innocent and unaware children do from time to time.
So I’d catch myself before I said it out loud, more and more as I got older, but I could never seem to stop myself from hearing it inside my head. I could see how saying I hate something would impact my relationship with that thing or that person, but I coudn’t see how it did the same thing inside of me.
Unfortunately, the hate in my head wasn’t directed toward vegetables or other people, it always seemed to be pointing back to me.
Because the hate in my head wasn’t directed toward vegetables or other people, it always seemed to be pointing back to me.
I hated my legs. I hated me feet. I hated my hair. I hated my inability to sing. You could literally pick anything about me, and I’d be able to come up with a reason to hate it within seconds, like there was some prize to win by proving how awful I was.
The trick here, was that I seemed to believe that if I could point out all the things that were wrong about me, then I could begin to fix them. And when I finally fixed everything about me, I could finally. be. happy.
Happiness, it had always seemed so elusive and required so much work to achieve. The happiness I sought was only available if/when I was capable of fixing all the things I believed were wrong about me.
So I set to work. Some days I worked really hard to find solutions to these problems. Other days I was too exhausted for action, but was fully capable of continuing to berate myself.
For some reason, even after years of participating in this continually unsuccessful pursuit, I never questioned the reasons I hated myself, and only questioned the solutions I had tried.
I was so convinced that I was the problem, that I couldn’t see any other way to be happy except to fix myself. I was stuck in a room where I believed the only way to get out was to find the magic key. Yet it felt like new keys were constantly showing up in the room.
Then one day, I don’t know why, but I went to the door and turned the knob.
To my surprise, it had been unlocked the whole time. I walked through.
I’d love to be able to say that I never find myself back in that room, but I’d be lying.
The door to happiness has been open and available every moment of my life. It was there all the times I judged myself, all the times I compared myself to the people around me, all the times I wished that myself and the world I lived in were different.
The door is always unlocked and open, it’s just that we are trying to find some magic key that doesn’t exist. I spent all the time looking for the key, that I never even tried to turn the knob.
Maybe you are also looking in the wrong place.