Burning, white-hot hatred. We know it when we see it—fueling wars, spawning deep political divisions. Most of us yearn to see hatred give way at least to tolerance—and certainly love would be the ideal. But how do we get there? 

You might be thinking, “I don’t hate.” Or, “I don’t personally deal with hatred.” But as we take a closer look, we may recognize ways we do feel dislike, animosity, or even hostility. For example, are we neutral when it comes to politics? We might even find ourselves rationalizing these feelings because, after all, there seem to be reasons for them.

If we discover that we’re struggling to let go of some form of hatred, examining the reasons for this struggle can actually be a helpful first step. Looking more closely, we can see that hatred is often based on fear of, or actual, loss: fear that something important can be taken away or a sense of loss because that important thing has already been taken from us. Often, hatred is an involuntary reaction to circumstances that feel out of our control.