Don't become jaded
"People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the hardest tests of our character is to resist hating when we are ourselves hated. Not for anyone else’s sake but our own we should avoid the pull towards resentment. When people have been nasty to us it is justifiable to seek revenge or hold grudges but this only punishes ourselves in the long run by tarnishing our view of how the world around us works.
As Emerson argues above, a reliable indicator of our character is how we see the world. This is because of cognitive dissonance and how we tend to react to it. It is difficult to process negative and conflicting thoughts and feelings about ourselves and we defend against this dissonance often by projecting it onto others or even onto the greater collective. Whether we are cursing God or humanity, we are ultimately also cursing ourselves.
It is true that within everyone is a capacity to do great harm and many people, including ourselves at times, end up exercising that capacity to catastrophic consequences. Like a sour fruit we want to discard people like that but what do we do when we are the sour ones? Well usually we find someone who is worse than us and put our ire on him or her instead.
So having a more positive opinion of the world reflects well back on you but it’s not as easy to change your opinion, especially when it is concerning somebody or a host of somebodies who have purposely done you harm. You start to think that you will never feel better until those people apologize or make up for what they’ve done to you. Now your well-being is entirely dependent on those people and you remain in emotional purgatory where everyone who hasn’t expressed their explicit support of you (and even those who have) will seem like potential enemies or maligned judges.
While others can truly be difficult and judgmental, your inability to move on until they come around has more to do with your own internal barriers than their faults. There is a part of you that doesn’t want to get better. Perhaps because it involves taking accountability for your mistakes or your emotional immaturity. Putting your recovery on them dooms you to failure but at least it isn’t your fault. Were it only not for them, your think to yourself, I would have been able to get passed this. Or maybe progressing is scary because you are afraid of success. It somehow seems safer to stay on the floor, even if it’s dirty, than to climb the latter again and risk another fall. Your downfall was so traumatic you have perhaps begun to over identify with it, so if you recover then you would have the existential struggle of figuring out who you are now. Nobody wants to be injured but at least nobody expects much of the injured player on the sideline and your trauma leads you to believe that you can no longer handle the pressure of being in the game.
While we sit out and lick our wounds it becomes easy for the resentment to grow and to assume that everyone else must be morally broken and that the world is essentially full of selfish, untrustworthy, judgmental jerks. The truth is, if you could scan the hearts of every human being you find exactly that. But that is not all you would find.
The people who judge you, scorn you, and pity you are not likely to ever be your best friends but the sooner you can remove them from your list of enemies the better you will be. Just as it is true that your perception of the world is reflection of your character, so is theirs. Their unfair and unkind views of you reflect poorly on them and this can be your chance to regain some moral ground. As soon as your drop your expectations for their repentance you can move your focus on your own well-being. It’s easier said than done but a good start is to try and understand how they could have come to the conclusions about you in an honest and reasonable way. This requires a lot of ego strength but you can grant them some grace as you recognize that at least on the surface your story, especially without the mitigating factors or contexts that the casual observer might not know, does sound bad. Maybe these people are being uncharitable in their interpretation but they aren’t entirely wrong either. You may have crossed a line that is sacred to them and they see themselves as the guardians of virtue in this particular respect, and who knows, maybe we need people like that.
It sounds almost masochistic to accept that other people hate you so unfairly and that they might have valid reason to but it’s hard to find any other way around this complex emotional standoff. You would like to somehow demonstrate to them that you are indeed good but this is essentially impossible. You might even fantasize about their social demise as if them getting a taste of their own medicine somehow would absolve you. The more you try to get your haters to change their view of you the more trapped you will feel.
What if they are not bad people they are just wrong? Or maybe they’re not even that wrong they just have their own valid reasons for being extra sensitive to your particular brand of sin. What if your inability to see them as inherently good people has more to do with your emotional hangups than theirs? And what if you could see them as good people who ultimately want to stand up for what they think is right?
What does that then say about you?
It’s hard enough to be kind to people who you love, how much more saintly does one need to be to be generous to those who hate him? This is your chance to stretch your character to a new level of kindness and generosity. “Do good to those who hate you. Bless those that curse you. Pray for those that mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27) This is not tips on how to be more moral than others. This is the way. These principles are just as sound psychologically as they are religiously. When you love those that hate you, their power over you dissolves and their hate of you becomes irrelevant.
You can be filled with passion, love, creativity, mercy, and determination or you can be filled with resentment, shame, and mistrust. Much of this depends on how you see the world. What is your belief about humanity, particularly the humanity that surrounds you? Tell me that and I can predict the course of your recovery.