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To my friends, I love you forever. To my haters, I hope someone loves you because you sure need it.

This status I posted on Facebook and Twitter last night was inspired by someone I don’t even know who decided to take time out of her life to inform me that I’m bipolar because I’m “suicidal” one minute and the next I’m not, and people only hang around because they feel sorry for me. There was no rhyme, reason, or anything logical to it. Aside from the obvious ignorance in that statement by insinuating being bipolar or suicidal is somehow something to be ashamed of and justifies insults (neither condition deserves such ignorance), my first reaction was to ask why she even cared about what I talk about because her Twitter account wasn’t even following mine. For the record, I am neither bipolar nor suicidal but that’s beside the point. Really, what is the point? Are those kinds of hateful comments supposed to make me say, “Gee, you’re right. You clearly don’t know me but you must be right! I’m going to delete myself from the internet altogether just to make you feel better.”? No.

There has been an epidemic since the inception of the internet that people can hide behind their computers and lash out at anyone who mildly irritates them. It’s still shocking because most people would never have the guts to bully you to your face. This kind of thing used to really bother me. People really seemed to enjoy spreading rumors about me, attacking me, and so forth, until I nearly drove myself crazy trying to answer every rumor, every piece of hate, etc., with the truth.

Then I realized one day that this is not my problem after all. It’s theirs.

Usually I let these things go and pretend like they’re not there. People tell me to do that because I tend to be scrappy. I’m naive enough sometimes to think I can reason logically with hatred even though I know logic and hatred are incompatible things. I’m a person who likes to turn a negative into a positive, so if one person can learn from the things I’ve been through and develop their self-confidence from it, then I’ve turned an act of hatred into an act of love. It takes away their power. I’ve heard it said before that silence is acceptance. This does not mean fight back with negativity and verbal daggers of your own because then you are no better than them. It does mean, however, that you can translate negativity into positivity. So, here I am, making this into a lesson for anyone else on the receiving end of such negativity. Read on, soak it in, and consider it as adding to the principles of the way you live your life.

No matter what we do or say, people are going to believe whatever they contrive in their heads. We are in the information age where everything is delivered to us in convenient little sound bites until no one person has a complete picture of the truth. Judging an entire puzzle by a handful of pieces doesn’t work. You get frustrated when the pieces don’t fit with the picture in your head and you lash out at the puzzle, which did nothing wrong to you, instead of thinking, “Maybe I just don’t have the whole picture right.”

The truth is I feel sorry for people like the girl who threw verbal daggers at me last night, as well as everyone else who does it, because something clearly hurts her so bad that she has to lash out, be bitter, and try to hurt strangers. Instead of arguing with those who unfairly judge, it may be a better idea to remember that there is something broken and insecure that makes them lash out without justification. It takes a bigger, more spiritually evolved person to have compassion for those who need to spread negativity to make themselves feel better. If you strip away the villain facade to see the insecure creature underneath, then the power to hurt you no longer exists. This does not make you better than them though, and they are not better than you. You are just different people battling different demons. The people who exhibit the least compassion are the ones who need the most compassion.

True, the mud they sling at you is going to hurt. You’re human. You have feelings. The key is to put the idea into practice that a bully or hater or whatever you want to call them only has power over you if you allow it. It’s one thing to say it but it’s quite another to believe it and apply it to the principles of your life. Does the gossip and hate change anything about your life? Does it change your belief system? Does it change the truth of who you are? Does it make your friends and family run away in disgust? No, no, no and no. It’s just an inconvenience like a parking ticket or a mosquito bite. It’s an annoyance on the abstract fringes of your life and the key is to keep it there rather than affecting the core of your life.

Nobody can change your truth.
Nobody can change who you are.
Nobody knows you better than you know yourself.

If your heart, intentions, thoughts and deeds are in fact based in goodness and living an authentic life without pretense, then nothing anybody can say will change that. If you’re afraid of people leaving your life because of gossip and hate they might hear, then they were never really a valuable part of you in the first place. It sounds cliche but it’s actually true. I’ve learned this the hard way by trusting the wrong people and learning in the end who really supported me even when I was at my lowest. Those are the people who matter in your life. When you have real, genuine friends who are there through everything, not just fair weather friends, then you begin to understand the nature of true and lasting friendship. Anyone willing to listen to gossip and hate doesn’t really value you. Move on because you will find people who genuinely love you.

Time does make it fade. By that, I mean in the heat of the moment, it may feel like you’re never going to recover from unjustified gossip and hatred. Your feelings are raw, you’re furious, you want to fight the source of the hatred, etc. That is the moment when you need to go over the principles of compassion, taking away their power, being more spiritually evolved, and leaning on the people who really matter. Then a few days later, you’ll notice there isn’t so much pain involved. Before you know it, you’re looking back on the incident with indifference because you are still you and you were not dragged down into the black hole of negativity. Next time verbal daggers are thrown at you, you’ll remember how liberating it was not to get sucked into a hate cycle and it’ll slide right off your back.

Don’t hate those who hate you. Bless them, send them on their way and remind yourself….