SELF-HATRED

Maybe, just maybe, we should all just take a brief moment to ask and wonder if the action of letting in detrimental and harmful habits in our lives, of paving the way for the almost unstoppable yet avoidable growth of the roots belonging to the very evil that threatens our own existence, could be the consequence of something much deeper. Something not visible to the naked eye.

You see, I believe that the compulsion towards repeating those actions that we deem harmful might not be a simple irrational part of the human psyche. One perspective may lead us to interpret it as a way for our mind to seek at least a remotely similar symbolic representation of something we might define as important to live a fulfilling life that we might feel we lack.

A very clear example of this would be the individual who seeks comfort in pornography due to an unfulfilling relationship he or she may find themselves in. Using it as a visual, graphic, and symbolic representation of the very intimacy the relationship may be lacking.

Of course, this is rarely, if ever, one-dimensional. But I feel like it's enough to flesh out the idea.

Pain is what addictions bring to us; anguish is the by-product of the uncontrolled compulsions, of those actions poisonous to the soul that we give shelter to within us. When we find ourselves doing this, suffering is the only fate that awaits us every single day of our lives till the day we perish, also without knowing if the suffering would even end after death. Deep inside our very being, we know this to be true. We are more than certain of it, as we experience the suffering daily, so the question remains: Why do we do it? How could we do it? To ourselves? Aren’t we worthy of forgiveness? Of a life of joy? Of course we're not. And before you condemn me to hell for such an answer, let me explain.

You see, I believe that if we change perspectives, we might uncover an alternate reason for all of what we do.

A part of us knows that the current state we find ourselves in is not deserving of a life of happiness, of fulfillment. And this is because of one thing:

There’s no more growth to be found in the person we are today. And we damn well know it. Deep inside we know our potential, or at least have some notion of it. Our higher self knows we are better than what we are now and due to this, it deems us unworthy of joy until we start addressing the issues at hand. We know we could do better, yet we don't. The father punishes his son for his own good. The unconscious becomes conscious and screams for help. 

And we hear it alright, yet we profess deafness.

Like I mentioned previously, and as you may expect, drumroll, we don’t change. We remain the same. And, as a result, we end up committing the most hideous and disgraceful of atrocities (to ourselves) no sane man could or would ever. 

We subject ourselves to a vicious, never-ending cycle of anguish. We insert ourselves perpetually in a negative feedback loop. We, therefore, become the very embodiment of the commonly misattributed definition of insanity that most of us are familiar with:

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

- Rita Mae Brown, Sudden Death

As a direct consequence of this, we end up cultivating what we know as self-hatred in our mind, in our very soul. And this is where I believe we die in life. This is the moment we become a walking dead man. It is, to me, the saddest tragedy of all. The most tragic of suicides. But not all hope is lost.

You see, self hatred is just a symptom of a very much curable illness. At the end, this is just a means for our very essence, the wisest part of us, to tell us that there is indeed a necessity to evolve on a profound level. This is, more than anything, a wake-up call. A call to action. 

As sentient beings that we claim to be, we have a moral obligation to dig ourselves out of the hole we may find ourselves in, regardless of how hard it may seem to be. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but we must walk the tunnel to the very end in order to reach that said light. We have an existential right to be happy, to be joyful, and to enjoy life. But that right needs to be earned through effort and growth. The murder of an old self is mandatory in order to be born anew.