An Early Memory

I was around 8 years old when I first tried to grasp the concept of hate. My mother and I were driving past a cemetery late one night when we saw a crowd of people wearing white robes and hoods trying to lure people into the cemetery.  I was too young to understand what was going on, but being the curious child I was, I asked my mother who these people were and what they were doing. She simply said that these people, the Ku Klux Klan, hate people who are different from them. When I asked my mother why, she could not provide me with an answer. At a young age my mind was boggled by the thought of a group of people hating others simply because of the color of their skin or the religion they believe in.

All these years later I still can't fathom why someone hates someone else based on an external factor like race, gender, or religion. Current events continue to remind me that this is part of the reality we live in. To say that this reality is sad would be an understatement. I won’t pretend to have a solution to this tragic problem and when I try to explain racism and prejudice I come up short with an answer. The best explanation I can gather is that people learned this behavior; somewhere and somehow they learned to hate.

Many of us ask ourselves how to tolerate this reality. We live in a world where things don’t always make sense to us. We search for answers and meanings and sometimes fall short of understanding life. I believe it helps to talk these thoughts and feelings through with someone. Allow your feelings to be whatever they may be. Feeling our emotions is part of the process towards accepting how things are in life. Talking with someone else can help ease your burden of feeling everything alone. Knowing other people feel the same way can be comforting. I guarantee you’re not alone in your quest to understand human behavior and questions about the complexities of life.