The Only Thing More Powerful than Hate is Love

The first day we were at the ‘meditation for mediators’ retreat in Mexico a few weeks ago, masked men from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) killed Alex Pretti, a nurse who was involved in a peaceful protest against ICE’s surge in Minneapolis. While we had gathered in this beautiful, simple place to look inward, it was impossible to ignore what was happening in Minnesota. We had come to develop our compassion, yet our government’s actions were getting more horrifying every day.

I was struggling.

Norman Fischer, a Zen Buddhist priest, was teaching us to be compassionate to all people, but I was asking, ‘How do you show compassion toward government-sanctioned murderers?’

I’ve written in the past about Dr. Donna Hicks’ teachings on dignity – the concept that dignity is the inherent worth of every human being (as compared with respect, which must be earned).

I fundamentally believe that everyone deserves compassion, and that there is no “other.” I have no trouble extending this belief to those who come to the US from different countries and people of all skin colors, languages, and cultures. After all, my grandparents and great-grandparents were seen as the “other” in Russia. They were hard-working, poor, honest, oppressed Jews who left their shtetls to make a better life in the US. I assume that immigrants coming into America now are much the same.

But how do we find the inherent worth of the oppressor? How do we find compassion in ourselves for people who destroy the lives of others? How do we find kindness toward people who intentionally hurt children?

I wasn’t alone in asking this question. In private conversations and in the large group, we discussed the contradiction of it. We talked about the difficulty in finding the humanity in people who seem to be motivated by cruelty. We didn’t come up with answers.

By the end of the week, I decided that this was an unanswerable conundrum and that I could live with there being no answer. But I kept thinking about it after I got home.

Then I read about thousands of people turning out in sub-zero temperatures in Minneapolis, singing “I am not Afraid” in English and Spanish to their neighbors who were scared to leave their homes. The Singing Resistance started with 300 people, then 600, then thousands. And I remembered Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous quote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.”

We may not know how to find compassion for the bullies, but we can double down on our love for each other. Let’s sing together. Let’s do a million tiny acts of kindness, wherever we are, however we can. Let us each be the light for each other and drive out the darkness. Let’s live out the truth in the message that Bad Bunny sent last week in his brilliant half-time show: “The Only Thing More Powerful than Hate is Love.”