My heart ached when I heard the news Brent Taylor had been killed in Afghanistan. Brent was a friend who was a major in the Utah Army National Guard as well as the mayor of North Ogden in Utah.

My sorrow quickly turned to anger and hatred when I heard Brent was killed by one of the Afghan soldiers he was training.

Brent had a compassionate love for the people he was helping. He truly believed he was making a difference. For one of them to turn on him is what created these inconsolable emotions of anger and hatred I was feeling.

I don’t like anger and hatred. I don’t like how these emotions make me feel. I don’t like the energy they consume.

So let’s talk about anger and hatred.

How do you deal with these hard feelings? What ways have you found to help yourself effectively move one?

I posed these questions to a Facebook live discussion Sunday night which generated a few thoughts worth sharing. Click this link to watch my thoughts from last night.

CM: The only way I have found effective to unplug such a dark energy is to focus on being the light in someone else’s darkness. Help where you can. No matter how small or insignificant you think it is. It is the Good energy in this world. Give darkness no energy at all. You are a good man. This is intense. Reach out if you need… We are a community! Hopefully we can create an environment everyone will feel at home in.

Light does chase away the darkness. Even the smallest glimmer of light will penetrate the most intense darkness. I have been feeling some of that light that comes from the love of God. I also believe reaching out to lift others will help us replace the dark energy with good energy. 

JB: Anger and hatred are not synonymous. Unfortunately, we seem to see them as the same. Anger is a natural feeling that should be experienced rather than avoided. You’re not spiritually weak or mentally unbalanced because you have feelings of anger. It’s important to let emotions ride their course and let them go when they’re done, or else we never actually can get rid of them and they remain as suppressed feelings that never get resolved. Of course, don’t make choices and decisions based on anger, and learn to see what anger is the natural expression of loss and what anger is the expression of unhealthy attachments.

JB helped me remember anger and hatred are separate emotions, which at the moment I had not distinguished in my mind. Anger is natural and can be expressed in a healthy manner. Hatred, I believe, should not be natural and is not healthy.

JT: I just wish I could move on completely…  trusting people as a whole.

Sometimes moving on isn’t always easy. Sometimes trust is very difficult to build, especially if a trust has been broken. I would guess there are many American military members who aren’t too trusting of their Afghan counterparts right now.

KD: I think sometimes that anger and hatred will show in their faces because the other emotion we have is the hurting inside that can overwhelm us. Little by little the anger and hatred become less as we grieve, allow our hearts to hurt, and we process what has happened. Sometimes the cycle will repeat until we have been able to embrace our loss and the senseless evil we are faced with in this world. 

Sometimes the hurt we feel inside can be so deep and so painful, anger and hate are the natural consequences. Time can be a great healer.

KG: Sometimes when I don’t understand why things happen or I’m so angry, I have to give it to God and ask him to take it from me. When life becomes too hard to handle, God will do that for us. Hugs and hang in there!

SM: When situations like this happen I remind myself that we all will leave this earth. I ask myself. What am I supposed to learn from this? There are lessons and understanding that at any point we can leave this realm is frustrating. It can happen naturally or unnaturally. Time will lessen the burn but nothing will make us whole accept forgiveness.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, on Sunday’s Music and the Spoken Word, was quoted as saying, “God makes the world seem less frightening.”

God does make the world less frightening.

With God, it’s a little easier to forgive. With God, I’m letting go of anger and hate. With God, I can get up, keep going, and win the race.

And that makes life just a little bit better.

Have a good Monday! Thanks for letting me share.

Les

p.s. Take 13 minutes today to enjoy a little Happy!

REMEMBER…

“The story you most consistently tell yourself will be the story to most consistently come true in your life.”

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