Love, Admiration, Fear & Hatred

“We all want to be loved. Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs, we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact”

 

               My grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry— Fredrik Backman

 

This explains so much. Those who choose hate, who try to stir up fear, are admitting the vacuum in their own souls, their failure to merit admiration, to attract love. Every human deserves some measure of unconditional love, but also needs to step up to the mark of their own highest promise to be wholly worthy of love. So much of the willingness to be brainwashed into hatred and fear that we’re seeing in the world today is our incapacity to love ourselves and others, our inability to admire things worthy of admiration. If our family or school or culture refused to see our best possibilities, then we are vulnerable to being seen through our worst. What is intolerable is to be invisible, to be left alone without contact. So it behooves us all to choose wisely. Do we want to live lives that inspire the love of and from others, that merit admiration, or are we content to be feared, hated and despised?

 

As I wrote in my recent book, if no one invites us to join the band and do the work to express ourselves through the discipline of learning an instrument, the habit of playing in harmony with others, the work of immersing ourselves in beauty, then we might join the gang. Not just the violent street gangs of teens, but the gang of the fundamentalist churches or mean-spirited political parties or conspiracy theory trolls. If we can’t stir up feelings of love or admiration from others, then we’ll troll their Facebook posts or Substack writings and shoot out our hateful venom at those who are actually doing the work to think, feel and care. 

 

And so education. Not only to develop our capacity to think, to feel, to care in a conscious and intentional way, but to create learning communities dedicated to making sure that each child be welcomed, valued, seen, celebrated and encouraged to fulfill their highest humanitarian promise. It is  perhaps the most needed and radical act that reduces the toxic practices of contemporary life, refuses the invitation to fear, hate and despise. 

 

As schools all over the country finish up their year, a grand salute to all the teachers and institutions that take that work to heart.