Why Do I Hate My Life – The Answer Might Surprise You!

It is really interesting to find out just how many of us have said at one point or another that they hate life.

And when you actually decide to check out why, instead of blindly accepting that you simply do, you start with one simple question.

Why do I hate my life?

Sometimes we feel like we have totally legitimate reason to hate life. We feel cheated, betrayed, left down, kicked, in other words, we feel like something that was done to us or is done in the world is simply wrong or unfair.

We feel betrayed, upset, apathetic, depressive or even angry and we even want to hurt others in an effort to balance things out, or we want to hurt ourselves, because we feel as if the pain is too much to handle.

When I found myself asking this question, the answer didn’t came to me immediately.

It took some time and some deep and honest introspection to be able to realize what is the exact reason for hating my life.

Judgement and Expectations

I realized that I had expectations of life, and that expectations consisted of my judgment about how people should act and what experiences I need (or deserve) to have in order to be happy.

I was judging things as “Good” or “Bad”.

I felt I need to stand for what I judged was good and just, and fight off or reject why I judged was bad. I was passionate about the things I approved off, and rebelious against the things I felt were plain wrong or unjust.

And I zealously pursued the things I thought would make me happy, I even had them on my to-do list.

Ironically, although I did manage to achieve most of the things I placed on the list, I still couldn’t experience real and lasting joy or love for life.

Pain Happens

Then of course, there were also situations that, when they were happening to me, brought with them the experience of what it seemed to be extraordinary amount of pain. And I am not talking about physical pain. I am talking about emotional pain. And at times it felt like I would not be able to handle it.

Emotional pain is something that you can feel but not so easily describe. It’s the state that you point out to, when you say “I feel awful” or “it hurts so much”. You can’t really put your finger on how it actually hurts, you just feel it really does. I hated when I was confronted with that.

Also I noticed that the seeming injustice and wrongdoings in the world, that I was witnessing on the Internet and TV, just pushed my unhappiness (and soon to be hate towards life) in the high gear.

I realized this state was not healthy, let alone pleasant, so I started to think about what needs to change for me to be happy.

What Needs to Change?

I decided to create another list. A need-to-change-to-be-happy list.

There were so many things that appeared on that list in a relatively short amount of time. I was surprised to recognize that all those things that I came up with, are also the ones I actively resisted in my life.

The list had things that were under my control, but also a huge amount of things that were really not under my control, like:

• the actions and conducts of other people,
• the seeming inability of the human race to be honest and fair,
• the rules and regulations that were put in place to ensure conformity to the outdated standards or inequality in some form,
• the addiction of the majority of our population to fear, aggression, destroying and killing, etc.

My Own Resistance

I noticed that my own resistance to those things created a huge amount of anxiety and depression in me. I felt like there is nothing I can do and I really didn’t feel there is any use in trying. Things just don’t seem to change and they will probably never change.

But, in that state of utter despair, for some reason beyond my understanding, I continued to push for more answers.

I asked myself “Would I be happy if all those things on my list suddenly changed into what I perceived to be a perfect state?”.

The answer was clear and loud YES.

Paradox of Achieving and Sustaining Perfection

Then I followed my reasoning with another question. “Do I really expect things or experiences, once they reach that perfect state, to remain in that state forever?”

The answer was surprisingly honest NO.

I knew that the nature of the world and our existence is constant change. That means nothing stays the same forever and everything eventually goes trough the cycles of progress, optimum state, decline and inevitably death or disappearance.

For example, I had on my list “having a wonderful romantic partner”. If I imagined having one, and focused my thoughts on that single moment in time where everything about my partner was totally and completely perfect, I knew that after getting to that state of out-most perfection, due to the nature of the world that is constantly changing, there needs to come a moment of imperfection.

And that moment of imperfection would be the end of my perfect state. There was no way for me to keep that perfection from falling apart!

When you think about all the great civilizations from our past, and all the types of government, especially totalitarian ones, you quickly notice they all had a single moment of ultimate power, after which something happened that started to change the situation for the worse.

In my eyes, what I clearly recognized now, perfection cannot be achieved and held unto forever in this world.

And even if I tried to reason that the moment of imperfection could take years to happen, I knew that from that second of achieving perfection, I would start to worry about that moment being lost.

I Want to Get It and I Want to Keep It

It’s just part of our human nature. We first want to have something, and once we go through all the trouble and hassle to get it, we then can’t allow ourselves to relax because we need to protect our prized possession from malfunctioning, disappearing or being stolen from us.

Just remember how many people, who seemingly achieve so much in our life, choose suicide as a way out of their depression, because they are not able to process these simple truths. Robin Williams is a good example, as he was a man dedicated to making other people laugh and be happy, he had fame and money, but still was utterly depressed.

At the time I am writing this article, famous actor Jim Carrey attends funeral of late girlfriend Cathriona White, who committed suicide after Jim left her. And she was only 28 years old!

See what can happen when we delude ourselves into thinking there is no way out? And the prison is made only by ourselves!

On another note, when I pondered about more general things in the world that I would like to impose, like not allowing people to kill each other, or hurt animals, not allowing factories to pollute our planet, not allowing the existence of companies that are doing unethical things just because of the profit, I quickly realized that would be actually me imposing my own will and judgement on to the world.

And who am I to tell the world what to do and what not do to? It’s how dictators come into play. They put themselves in charge of thinking, feeling and doing for everyone under their rule, because they feel what they think is the only right and just way.

But no dictator ever survives for too long, either he dies or the people overthrow him. Just look at the recent history for the proof of this.

This all helped me a lot to realize that what my mind was telling me about the only way to be happy, is actually impossible to achieve in this world.

And I didn’t even take into account the obvious dualism on which our world is based. You can’t see an object if you don’t have space (no object) around it, there is no light without darkness, there would be no day without a night and no life without death.

The Answer Appears

I continued with my questions about happiness and anger towards life, and I asked myself “OK, if the answer is not related to achieving a perfect state, or having it my way, how then would I stop hating my life?”.

The answer finally started to appear.

The way to stop hating my life, would be to stop being so angry, disappointed, apathetic and depressive about the world and it’s current state.

And how can I stop being like that?

I need to stop resisting the same things that I judge as negative or wrong.

I need to fully accept them, recognize them, acknowledge them in my life.

And then I need to welcome them, so I can start allowing them to dissolve on their own.

I realized that in life I always have only two options, to whatever I am experiencing in the moment.

One is resistance, which I have been doing almost my entire life and I know it makes me hate my life.

The other would be something completely opposite. And that opposite thing is unconditional love.

Unconditional love, like the one mother gives to her child. It is the only force that can dilute the poison of judgement. It is the only force that is stronger then every negative feeling, when you decide to stop resisting it.

It was the single most important thing that Lester Levenson discovered and based his entire teachings on. 

And from there, I decided to face all my negative feelings, utilize all the tools that were at my disposal, and start letting go of my resistance and working on my acceptance and unconditional love.

Little by little, I noticed I was slowly becoming less angry, less depressive, less apathetic, and more peaceful, optimistic, enthusiastic and energetic.

You see, every path needs to start with the first step.

Mine was deciding to take the online RT Love course.

And like Jim Rohn said, “You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.”

Today, choose to change your direction!

I invite you to share your views with me in the comment section, and also share this article with anyone you think might benefit from it.

Much love,

Sinisa

Images courtesy of Stuart Miles and David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net