Learning to Love What You Hate

I am terrible at art. Just terrible at it. You could give me every single art tool that has ever been created and I could maybe MAYBE make a stick figure. Art is something I never just had a talent for, and it was never something I saw myself improving in over time. There are a lot of things I’m not very good at, whether it be baseball, science, or being able to keep the tire pressure in my car tires consistent (working on the last one). There are things that we as humans just are not as successful as other people.

I want y’all to stay with me for a bit though because I want to go deeper into this. I argue that some of the things that we’re not great at are also things we might dislike about ourselves. We may wish we were better at a certain sport or looked a certain way, or even acted a certain way, and because we don’t have these things we are unsatisfied. We become unsatisfied with who we are, and not only forget what makes us unique, but we can start to hate parts of ourselves or parts of our stories.

The main reason I came into my faith was because of a retreat I went on in high school. During that retreat, I recognized the numerous ways I had hurt people and was able to receive the Father’s mercy and forgiveness for those things. Yet, after that retreat, I started feeling more shame, more guilt, and more contempt in myself for who I was and for the kind of man I had once been. How could I ever change and become the man I wanted to be if I had done these things that I hated about my past?

I realized something pivotal about life at that moment, however. I realized that we are never capable of growing as human beings when we are stuck in the past because it fails to allow us to see our present, and as a result, our future. I had to let go of the ways I fell short previously in my life so that I could learn to live my best and most fulfilling life now! From that moment, I was able to slowly let go of my past some, and yet even that wasn’t enough! It’s too easy for us to let go of our past, and things we aren’t proud of as a way of compartmentalizing our emotions. We were never created to be running and hiding from parts of ourselves, and that’s why letting go of our past isn’t enough. We need to see that in those moments we were learning lessons, and being formed for our future friends, future relationships, and future vocations. As a result, we need to love these things!

Now I don’t say love as an excuse to be proud of the not so great things we’ve done, but rather to understand them in an appropriate light and to know that there is nothing too great or too heavy that makes us undeserving of love. We are created in love, by love, and for love, and nothing can change these facts. Our deserving of love doesn’t change based on our actions. If we hurt someone or use someone, they may be less willing to choose to love us, but that does not mean we are undeserving of love from everyone else in our life.

So that’s what I’ve been doing, and what I want to challenge all of you to do. Love your past. Love the things you hate about yourself. Once you love parts of you that you don’t want to, then you gain the freedom needed to become the fullest potential of who you are as a person. Seize that potential.