Think There's Nothing You Can Do About the Hatred in the World Right Now? Think Again. Here's What You Can Do to Be a Light

It's a common conversation these days: How mean the world has become. On the political front, in the ascension of anti-Semitism and racism, on airplanes and the roads we share with other drivers. We've come to accept that sites like Twitter are receptacles for hatred and vitriol. We tend, more and more, to shrug it off with a ‘What can you do?' attitude. It's that last detail – the shrugging off, the surrender to a dark reality, that we need to pay attention to.

If you think there is nothing you can do about the darkness tumbling over you, you don't even try to reach for the light. You don't marshal your strength, your resolve, your determination; you don't say, 'I am going to stand strong, in my own pool of light, and not let the darkness conquer me.”

Otherwise, our undoing could be the surrender to forces that seem bigger than us, the giving up of hope that something noble can rise up and change this dangerous spiral.

I have, on a very personal level, been on the receiving end of hatred. It started in about 2015, when Donald Trump waved open the doors of cruelty and hatred toward anyone who didn't agree with him. To be clear, he didn't create the vitriol that was unleashed, he just said to those who harbored that vitriol, 'Come on out, the weather's fine.” And they did. Whenever I wrote an op-ed piece, I got reader messages that dripped with hatred. That elevated to death threats on more than one occasion, one instance being serious enough that I contacted the FBI.

Here is what happens when you're on the receiving end of hatred: fear weakens you, it drills into your bones, your psyche, it colors everything. And then, to try and get a handle on the fear, you reach for anger. That cauldron of emotions starts to feel normal. You wake up to it every day, it sleeps beside you at night. I didn't want to become that person, but I felt it happening. In 2017, I stopped running my support group Beyond Alzheimer's, a group for caregivers of those with dementia. I had run it for six years twice a week. But I had begun to worry about whether I was putting others in danger. I had done publicity for the group; the schedule was public, and anyone could walk in. I thought of the horror of mass shootings that we've seen too many times, and I felt it was safer for everyone there for me to no longer run the group. Something deep inside me felt defeated, weakened by a tide of hatred that was cresting in this country, that seemed to be everywhere. The panic attacks that plagued me many years ago, that I had gotten a handle on, nudged at me again, making me feel like even more of a victim.

Then I remembered something my father told me when I was young. He told me about soldiers in the Korean War who died from no apparent physical causes. He said it was determined that they willed themselves to die and that it came to be called 'give-up-itis.” I thought, No – I am not going to give up believing that light can defeat darkness. I am not going to surrender to the cruelty and hatred that has been sanctioned and encouraged by individuals who have seized the spotlight and amassed millions of disciples. I will take the precautions I need to take, particularly where other people are concerned, but I won't let my heart grow dark and weary.

It seems to me that for us, collectively, to battle back the darkness we have to reclaim our hearts. We need to have faith that there is always light behind the darkness and our responsibility on this earth is to reach for it. These are frightening times; there is no point in denying that. But we can accept our fear, even embrace it, and turn it into fuel – use it to propel us into the people we are supposed to be on this earth. We're meant to reach higher, to look up, to trust that even when the sky is drenched in darkness, there are stars to guide us. Sometimes reaching up means reaching within. When we can't see the light of stars above us, it's because that light is waiting inside us.