Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Sowing....and reaping.

 June 11, 2025


I very much fear that we are on the verge of another if not a global pandemic, at least a very pervasive epidemic. I see the signs of the growth of a disease that has in fact been present throughout the ages. One that, while harmful to the unfortunate individual who has contracted it, has always failed to spread easily to others.  It has appeared locally, here and there throughout history, but has remained for the most part a malady that, if it turned virulent, was easily isolated.

But now I am very much worried that this disease, as the worst of them will inevitably do, is metastasizing. It is more contagious now than ever, and it has begun to dig in, and to spread from its location of origin through the rest of the body—even to parts not prone to it.

Friends, the body is our society and the disease is hate.

Slowly, stealthily, over the last decade or so, hate has taken hold of a greater number of our brothers and sisters. I think it’s because of all the bullshit that has been thrown about in the media, in small gatherings, in our political arenas, hell, into the very air itself.

Now, as we all know, not all bullshit is bad. While it all does stink, some of it makes an excellent manure. Bullshit can work wonders on rose bushes. You can spread some on your bare garden plot just as spring is taking hold, and whatever you plant thereafter has a good chance of thriving.

Sadly, that’s also true if what you plant thereafter is not something good and beneficial. It’s true if what you plant is hatred.

Sowing hatred is a lazy habit. It’s like sowing weeds. Weeds choke out good plants and steal all the nutrients for themselves. It’s what you can plant and walk away from, knowing you don’t really have to tend to it if you sow enough of it. You’ll end up with a bumper crop with practically no work at all. As I said, lazy.

I’m seeing so much hatred in the course of my everyday life. There are some videos on YouTube. Maybe you’ve seen a few of them. They feature some “great injustice” done to an innocent person, and then the “great take that you cur!” that is ostensibly the moral of the piece. But what the piece does—whether wittingly or unwittingly—is to fertilize the seeds of hatred within you, the viewer. When you’ve finished watching the video, you’re not left with a feeling of having been uplifted. What you’re left with is a desire to see more.

Those videos aim to convince you that they have obliterated the injustice. But they haven’t done that at all. And that is because they use the same sort of injustice against the first hater, followed by an implied, “how do you like them apples?” And so they fail. They fail because the creators of those videos have forgotten one true fact about hate.

Hate cannot conquer hate. Only love can do that.  Darkness cannot vanquish darkness; only light can do that.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I bit at the worm on the hook. It took my watching about three videos to understand why I felt the way I did after viewing them. Because the answer to the damage done by hate is never to throw hate back at the source. It can’t be.

One of the hardest things we learn as reasoning, thoughtful and loving human beings is that haters will hate, and the only weapon to fight it is love, and forgiveness.

Fact is, whatever you toss out into the cosmos comes back to you, often multiplied.

I understand the allure of spewing hate on those who have hated you. I really do. When we image “getting back”, at someone who has wronged us, we get a bit of a warm fuzzy and a sense that it would feel really good to do that. But that sense, that little voice that wants us to do just that is a lie. Because all we can ever reap from sowing hate is more hate.

There may be some who are saying, “I’m not going to forgive so-and-so. They don’t deserve it.”

Friends, no, perhaps they don’t. But you do.

You see, when you forgive someone for any real or perceived wrong done to you, you’re not giving them a gift. Frankly they could care less.

You’re giving yourself a gift.

You are giving yourself a gift by taking the weight of that hate off your soul—and filling your heart with love.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury


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