Lucky 13

"For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you"
- Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass

I found a quote that sums up my current state of being. I feel calm. I feel content. I feel at peace. You would struggle to rouse me to anger or bitterness. It's an unusual feeling, and for me, not a normal one.

"Clear and sweet is my soul... and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul"

That line also made me reflect on those that hate me too. I’m constantly trying to stop hating them back, those bastards who would want to see me dead, who would deny me my basic human rights. The drama queens. The hecklers. I'm leaving it to them to hate. They have their own issues.

In place of hate, I feel pity. Why? Because they're moths.

Why moths?

Did you ever hear why moths fly into candles?

Moths navigate by light. The sun, the moon, the stars. They mistake the candle on the table for a natural light source. But because it's static, their navigation gets confused, and they fly round and round it in circles, getting gradually closer and closer. These people who hate me are the same. They have misidentified something good and natural as being evil and malevolent. They say I am the enemy, that I have no value except as figures of hate. And so they take all their cues from me; react against everything I do. But I try to keep thriving, and keep growing. My light, my way of life, my candle on the table, keeps getting bigger and stronger and brighter. Inevitable, this attracts more and louder hate. The result? You can see it everyday in their actions and statements. Their desperation is growing. They're spinning faster and faster and louder and louder in decaying orbits of hate and vitriol. So I'm just waiting for them to run into the flames and burn up. It will happen. It's already happening. The more work we do to combat it, the sooner it will happen. Eventually, all their hatred will be suddenly extinguished, with a pfffft and a silent scream.

So no, I don't hate them. I pity them. I pity them for the fact that when that time comes, they will have to account for their hatred, have to admit that they were wrong. And they will feel an enormous emptiness. All that misplaced, misdirected hate and energy. I pity them, because they will have to judge themselves in whichever afterlife they think they are going to, in front of whichever icon they worship, and they will have to judge themselves. And they will find that they are lacking. That they have been needlessly, viciously cruel to people who did not offend, and who did not deserve it.