It’s never about you.

mrt 14, 2020 | English

Why do people hate you?

I’ve always wondered about that and been affected by it, especially since my Twitter account started to attract more and more followers, and with that a whole bunch of skillful trolls with too much time on their hands entered my life.

It’s truly puzzling when you first think about it:

Most people don’t even know themselves very well, so how would they have enough intimate information about you to dislike you so much?

Well, they don’t.

And although you’ve probably heard this over and over again your whole life (‘It’s never about you, it’s 100% about them’), it reaches a whole new level of clarity and acceptance when you start to explore this from an inside-out perspective.

You see, nobody has a clue about what the world really looks like.

We only know it from our deeply colored mental stories that make up our direct experience.

WE create the world, our world, and we simply don’t realize it.

Personal perception is the cunning middle man who tells us what to think and how to feel, and we hardly ever question that – why should we?

Most people don’t recognize their stories as stories: to them it’s just the way it is.

Ugly things are obviously ugly.

Stuff you like makes you happy when you get it, and miserable when you lose it.

Traffic jams are frustrating.

Puppy’s are amazing.

Your job is pretty cool, although sometimes it’s not (huh?).

And Marnix (or fill in your own name) is a person you should definitely despise.

Why?

‘Well, because he posts all these things that are utterly unrealistic, overly romantic, naively spiritual or just plain stupid and ignorant and boring, and those are simply facts, because every time I visit his account and read his latest tweets, they make me fucking furious!’

The proof seems to be in the pudding of direct experience.

According to common (silent) agreement, it’s not our totally subjective worldview that creates our likes and dislikes, and it’s not our carefully filled bag full of preferences and opinions that tells us how to feel: it’s the world that creates all these experiences, directly.

It’s him, or her.

It’s their tweets, their voice, their smell, their clothes, their behavior.

Well it must be, right!

But it’s not, not ever.

People don’t hate you.

They just think so, and never question that.

It’s pretty helpful that you and I do.