How many times a day/week/month do we say the word “hate”?
Does it sound vehement like “I hate when my car breaks down!” or casual like “I hate mushrooms on my pizza!” when you hear yourself saying it? Does it sound directed at something like “I hate tax time!” or someone like “I hate the neighbor who doesn’t curb their dog in my yard!” and in the end, does it really matter??
No matter what context or how you look at it the word, “hate” is contagious and it hinders our true nature to love and feel compassion like a huge concrete spiritual roadblock. When you consider the severity of violent crimes against others like Matthew Shepard and the rampant bullying in schools and playgrounds, you start to internalize the notion that there isn’t room in the world for “hate” so we need to stop saying it. Plain and simple.
When I heard Judy Shepard speak this month at the Center on Halsted about her son’s death and her life in activism afterwards it dawned on me that if things are to really change, we need to look at ourselves. Real change starts there. With us.
After the folks from the Matthew Shepard Foundation passed out purple wristbands with the call to action “Erase Hate” embossed on them, I thought to myself, I’ll wear it but I don’t really use the word “hate” at all. I wasn’t raised like that. Still, I thought it was a good reminder with the kids, their learning their friend’s bad habits from school and all so I quickly put mine on and encouraged the kids to wear theirs for at least a week as a reminder. And we did.
Little did I know how many times I’d use the word in my daily life. Although it was never casual, it didn’t matter. The word carries a negative power that seeps into one’s consciousness like darkness extinguishing the light from our hearts. I believe this.
Now when we start to say the word, we catch ourselves immediately and rephrase. Beyond using the word “dislike” as a simple replacement, we’ve pondered as a family how we can focus on and strengthen the positive instead. Why emphasize what’s wrong in the world when there’s so much good? So much beauty, grace and possibility.
Erase. Destroy. Gently let go. Whatever your style. Just remove “hate” and replace that space with compassion. Our world, and our children are better for it.
This reminded me of an interesting piece I wrote – Translating Hate, inspired by someone else’s analysis of hate and it’s use / meaning. Indeed, we should all be more mindful of “hate”
as one who firmly believes in the power of the word (any word) i always caution my daughter to “watch her language” because ‘words have power’ …if we use a vocabulary of negative words the world is a darker place…
Hey there. You have probably seen this but this in the life media episode just came out today about trans kids/families!
This will be tasteless but he should be called METHEW Wayne Shepard. Truth is Methew Wayne Shepard before October 1998 was a bad reckless person in last year of life. Methew Wayne Shepard chose U of Wyoming of all the colleges he could get into & then he put down Laramie & the college. Methew Wayne Shepard was a drunkard junky who mixed Ecstasy with anti-depressants & in August 1998, METHEW Wayne Shepard committed assault&battery on Cody bartender who reacted by decking him. The next Day, MW Shepard falsely accused bartender of crime. Mrs. Judy Shepard has profited from her son’s death, which OK, is her right to do so, but we’ll tell the ugly truths about who Methew Wayne Shepard was.