In a world full of hate and hurt, love must be a conscious choice

By David McElroy · March 12, 2022

I’m not certain whether I love this world or hate it. I’m never sure whether I love my fellow humans or hate all of us. How can I be so confused about this?

There are times when I experience beauty and love and joy as I walk through this world. In those moments, I feel as though all is right and I’m at peace. I feel as though I love the people around me and want to connect with them. In those moments, it’s a joy to be alive.

But there are times when mundane and callous actions by others pierce my heart and make me hurt and cynical. In those times, I sometimes hear an inner voice crying, “I hate everybody!” In those moments, I want to give up on humans and become a hermit. I wonder why God made us.

Am I confused? Schizo? Bi-polar?

Not really. I’m just experiencing very different parts of what it means to be alive. And as much as I want to rage against the things which hurt me and make me want to run away, I have to accept that my own choices have brought me to where I am. Even when others have taken actions which have hurt me and angered me, I am the one with the power to change my own life.

Nobody can do it for me. I have to change myself in order to change my experience of this world.

I read a piece of advice the other day that made me cynically scoff at its naïveté:

“Decide that kind of life you actually want. Then say no to everything that isn’t that.”

The idea is ridiculous. I’m just going to say no to being hurt or being alone. I’m going to refuse to do any work which doesn’t make me happy. I’m going to say no to taxes and politicians and more. It’s ridiculous.

But after I let the cynicism fade, I realized that I was eager to make sure I could blame others for the things which I don’t like in my life. Although there will always be things about this world — and my fellow humans — which are not what I want them to be, I realized that my choices drive how I interpret my experiences.

I can choose to believe that other people hate me and intentionally hurt me. Or I can choose to believe that they are hurting people who are doing the best they can. I can realize that they are just as confused and clueless as I’ve been when I’ve hurt others.

No matter how I thought about this, I kept coming back to my own choices.

I’m the one who determines how other people see me. I have a great influence on how they react to me. And I can decide whether I’m going to judge other people by the same standards I have for myself — or if I’m going to make excuses for myself and harshly condemn them.

If I can remain conscious of this, I can have more empathy for others. And I can also have more empathy for myself. Because we are all constantly making choices — and hoping things will be different this time.

Sometimes we get things right. Sometimes we make the wrong choices. Sometimes we live up to our own values. Other times, we fail and we make excuses for the messes we make.

Life is messy and we’re going to make mistakes. I’ve made more than my share of those mistakes. But through the ups and downs that we create for ourselves, we can see what it’s like to be loved — and we can see what it’s like to love someone else in a genuine way.

We can also experience what it’s like for others to be hateful and nasty to us. We can know what it’s like for others to mistreat us and allow us to be hurt.

But if we’re paying attention, we can make choices that guide us back toward the light. We can say no to the things which we discover are evil and hurtful. We can transform our own hearts to be more loving and decent to others. We can even learn to love ourselves.

But it’s a choice.

This world will never be perfect. It will never be filled with people who are flawless and always loving. But we can learn to make loving choices, for ourselves and others. We can learn to move away from hateful and hurtful people. We can learn to choose loving and nurturing people to be in our lives.

If we make the right choices — every single day — we can experience more of the love and joy of this world. And less of the hate and hurt.

It’s a matter of growing and maturing. It’s admitting our failures and asking for help. It’s learning wisdom in the face of our mistakes.

There will always be plenty of hate and hurt in this world, but our choices can bring us love and joy. In the midst of the pain and hatred of this lost world, we can choose to create our own tiny refuge of love.

We can never change the things we’ve done to create what we have now — whatever has brought us the hurt and pain — but we can start making better decisions for the future. At least in our hearts, we can try to create a paradise on Earth.

It starts with a conscious choice to change ourselves. And then this world might look very different when we look at it through the lens of love.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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