Being sad is part of the holiday season. Anyone in mental health care can tell you that. In my case, I’m sad this holiday season not for myself, but for others.
Many in this country appear to believe that the door to their heart can be closed and locked.
They’re wrong.
HATRED SHOULD NOT BE OUR NEW NORMAL
Americans have always had lively disagreements about policy. Democracy is built on healthy disagreement.
But there’s something new going on:
- People who in the past used to disagree about policy now express hatred of each other as individuals.
- People who in the past would never have acted out in public now feel they can harass or even attack those they don’t agree with.
MY FRIENDS ARE SCARED OF THEIR FAMILIES
Every day I seem to talk to someone who is living in fear of the holidays. They used to have policy disagreements with family members, and maybe there would be a lively political fight at the dinner table.
But now their family members hate them. As people.
Their family members parrot talking heads who speak approvingly of killing people they disagree with.
Their family members display political paraphernalia that encourages hatred and violence. They drink their warm, comforting beverage out of mugs that advertise hatred of individual humans.
MY FRIENDS (and I) ARE SCARED FOR THEIR FAMILIES
I grew up around lots of intolerant people. But most of those people stated their intolerance in generalized terms and in private. They didn’t spew it into the faces of strangers at a restaurant or people standing in line at a store.
There are places in this country now where I don’t want some of my family members to go. Some of us can hide the differences that make people want to hate and hurt us.
But my friends and I have family members who can’t hide. Their skin, the shape of their nose, their Adam’s apple—something about them gives them away as someone to be despised by haters.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO HATE
My father, a conservative, and one of his closest friends, a liberal, had many lively conversations throughout my childhood. But they were friends. They were decent to each other. Their friendship deepened their understanding of “the other.”
But these days, there’s a lot of noise out there telling you that in order to be pure in your political beliefs, you have to hate those you disagree with.
It’s not true.
THIS HOLIDAY SEASON, CRACK OPEN THAT DOOR
You don’t have to love or even like politicians. I won’t tell you not to have a personal disdain, or even hatred, for a politician who promotes or enacts policies that you despise. That’s politics. That’s democracy.
But when your family members walk in that door, remember that they are individual humans. When you express hatred of humans who disagree with you, you are expressing hatred of them. Open your heart. Forget about trying to lock them out—you can’t.
That lock on your heart is poison. Hatred will eat you from the inside out. Those people who are selling hatred want you to be eaten up, they want your attention—they want to pull you away from your family.
Don’t let them.
Disagree, accept, move on.
Well said!