Hatred
I’ve Misplaced Mine
I seem to have misplaced my anger engine No great loss
For all the trouble I caused my mom (and dad, too) she had this one nice thing to say about me: “But he’s kind.”
She said this more than once. Sometimes in my defense, arguing with my dad about my tendency to nick things not well nailed down — mostly small, or not so small, change which I invariably converted to candy within minutes; sometimes just apropos of who knows what, “But he’s kind.” She said this with motherly certainty.
I didn’t put much stock in this at the time, but later in life (as in lately) I’ve come to see how right (and how perceptive) she was.
To my knowledge (and I should know, memory permitting) I have only lost my temper, as in gone furiously off as it were, once (which you can read about here).
I have read a thousand times that, according to Gotama Buddha, the three gravest afflictions of man are greed, hatred, and delusion. Greed I know about — at heart I have been as greedy as the next guy. Delusion makes sense to me though I’m not sure just to what degree I am deluded, which is part of being deluded, of course. But hatred?
It’s like I was born an incomplete human: someone left it out, forgot to stuff hatred in with the rest of the garbage. I was born hatred-less. I think my mom could sense that. “But he’s kind.”
Scouring this life I now spot one other instant when something like hatred flared. Heading off to work one morning I saw that someone had stolen one of my car’s (a Honda Prelude) headlights. The welling up out of nowhere was me (crowbar in hand) coming upon this thief in the process of defiling my car. In this welling up, in rage I struck the thief’s arm, and broke it, I struck his shoulder and broke it, I struck his leg and broke it — relishing this unusual, this warm, flooding hatred as if a drug.
Then it was gone. Evaporated. Never to return.
Yes, in a sense I am an incomplete human, born hatred-less and most likely very much the happier for it. The notion of hitting someone, or fighting someone (the headlight incident notwithstanding) is utterly alien to me; still, I know that many people do relish the fisticuffs stuff, nurse their hatred, bloom with it, and harness its energy to propel them forward in life — at often dangerous speed.
Me, I putter along, hatred-less.
© Wolfstuff