Life is Full of Painful Events – Daily Meditation 12.8.23
Today’s quotation:
Life is full of painful events, and people who have lost their way and hurt others. Our pain is not lessened when we respond with hatred. In fact, the opposite occurs: When we hate people who hurt us, we come to resemble what we hate, or worse, and then we suffer all the more. What is evil is our response. We have choices, and love is the most powerful eliminator of all. -Bernie Siegel
Today’s Meditation:
It’s so easy to respond to negative things in our lives with many responses other than love. This is especially true when someone does something to us that isn’t at all loving and even hateful or downright mean. We often want to respond in kind, to make the other person feel as bad as we do–but the hard truth is that when we do look to respond in kind, we’re not responding lovingly at all.
If we respond to hate with hate, then we’ve become hateful. If we respond to anger with anger, then guess what? We’ve become people who allow anger to control us. And we don’t want that. I know that when I respond to anything in anger or hatred, I make serious mistakes, and I do and say things that I regret later. The only response that I want to have–and I’m not very good at making this actually happen–is the loving response because I know that we’re here on the planet to love one another, not to hate one another or be angry with one another.
The simple truth is that we make no situation better when we respond with anything but love and compassion. We may satisfy our temptation to “get back” at the other person, but that doesn’t mean we’ve done any good. Instead, we’ve more than likely made matters worse by adding to the negative energy of the entire situation.
I hope I learn to respond to everything with love and compassion someday. I don’t know that I’ll accomplish this goal before I leave this planet, but I hope that working towards it will do me and others a great deal of good. After all, if I know that anger and hatred do nothing but add negative energy to the world, then I must avoid those at all costs. Here’s hoping that I’m able to do so.
For further thought:
Meet hatred with hatred, and you degrade yourself. Meet hatred with love, and you elevate yourself and the person who bears your hatred. –
Ralph Waldo Trine
If you missed our last Daily Meditation, it is here.
