Hatred, Resentment and Anger

 Most people can accept that hate is a common human emotion, and that it is negative. I’ll start off this section by talking about negative emotion, such as hate, resentment, and anger, as well as my direct experiences with such emotions.

One of my earliest recollections of persistent feelings of hatred was in my 7th-grade class. I was in a new environment and had just transitioned from a different school the year before. There were a group of students in my new school, towards whom I felt a sense of incompatibility at minimum, enmity at worst. They had not wronged me, nor had I wronged them. But, there was nonetheless a feeling of mutual incompatibility. I did not earn their respect to the degree that my friends from my old school seemed to admire me, as far as my memory can tell me. The fact that I had made it to the grade’s top math and spelling bees (though I believe that this is less of inherent smartness, but more so the product of the attention and teaching I had received from an early age, coupled with the highly educated background of my parents, and my culture’s high emphasis on education). At my new school, my “smartness” was acknowledged to the degree that I was trusted in a group project. But my score on a math test for example was not valued or admired to the extent that I remember that my old school friends had.

In saying all this, I should clarify that I am not of the opinion that they should have behaved differently or more admiringly towards me. I feel that the people at my new school were a different type of social group, and being present in that environment played a role in curbing my ego. (I feel ego is a very interesting concept, not entirely bad, and have a separate section on this)

The next question is: why did I start to feel resentful towards that group in the first place? I suppose it is partly because I had associated my interactions with them with offense and embarassment. I simultaneously feel that their actions were warranted, and that there is no contradiction. The reason I feel there is no contradiction is that I recognize myself as a human, but also recognize those other boys as humans. For me to claim their action as culpable, I recognize that there should be a symmetry in my opinion of the culpability of the action, irrespective if I were them, or they, me.

My dislike for them culminated in a rather fiery outburst on my part towards the end of math class. I felt taunted by something he had done. I feel I can learn from my math teacher’s handling of the situation. She both told that boy to stop doing whatever he did that made me feel bad, but also told me not to make an outburst in the middle of the class. That felt fair.

I do have an interesting episode of one of my encounters with resentment, which lasted for about a week. I feel my handling of the situation was suboptimal, but the scenario was inherently a difficult one.

It was towards the end of October in my senior year of high school, and I was feeling an intense feeling of lack of motivation and disappointment, and lack of willingness to work on college application. In this state of dejectedness, I began to write down my thoughts in a stream of consciousness type of flow. I’m not sure I can explain the reason behind my negative emotion, but would be surprised if my feeling was caused by an unrelated factor, such as limited sleep. Roughly around that same week, I decided to go outside, and have a seat on the sidewalk beside the school. My mind had made my life dismal. I felt a bitter resentment towards life, and even later that year I found myself feeling upset that others had got into top colleges, while I hadn’t yet. What makes me sad in my handling of that situation is my lack of appreciation for the life I had, and my failure to remember my shortcomings and the innumerable occasions that life had given me for enjoyment, though it had no obligation to do so ever (I feel that there is no guarantee of happiness or happy fate in life, and would be interested in exploring whether the plight of the Jews in the Holocaust, destined to a life of imprisonment and cruel treatment, is really a testament to this).

My life could have been worse, but there was something perhaps more sadistic and twistedly pleasing about reveling in the things that had given me a bad fortune. Simplifying the story in my head to that extent, made it easier for me to escape the nuance of the difficult scenario I was in, and instead blame the world around me for my difficulty, while choosing to ignore my path to escaping out of that hole. Perhaps I had decided that my life sucked and that I wouldn’t try to change my mind. I now feel that no one can help a man entrenched in that state of being. That type of individual is fated to a life of misery, because of my opinion that things can always get worse. I feel strongly about the idea that life can always make you suffer more if you don’t try. Retreating into a world of vices and not trying to improve one’s situation wouldn’t help the scenario much more.

If I could go back and life those difficult one or two weeks again, I would reflect much more. I’d not take as much self-pity, but rather attempt to climb myself out of the hole I was in. I’d acknowledge that I was in a hole, as I had done, but wouldn’t go so far as to take pity on my misery. I’d take advantage of my social network and talk to my close friends. I’d reach out to a close friend or two and share how tough my life was, and I’d tell them my plan for improvement and take their input. Talking to them would be a reminder that I had much progress to make, and  a vent for negative emotion. Our discussion would stay in my memory, and when things got better, even slightly, I’d take pride in that.

Ultimately, things got better on their own, and I assume with some cooperation on my part, though I feel they would have progressed faster had I taken a more active role in self-improvement.