Red Deer Reality Rant #47 - Anatomy of a Broken Heart

Hello and welcome back for another one of my Red Deer Reality Rants. This past week has been fairly humdrum and routine for me. I have had plenty of time for boredom although it was great for introspection. I have mentioned before in previous posts about some of my biggest pet peeves. With some of the time I had over the weekend, I dwelled on one of them, and that is what I will rant about today.

I do like Red Deer. I have lived in much worse places. But one thing I have noticed in my travels is that people are a lot the same everywhere. There are good people, but all of us have faults. The faults that we tolerate are with people that we might consider friends. The faults that we can’t tolerate are the people we don’t like or even appear to be enemies. I am an introverted person, but I don’t hate people. Most people I don’t even dislike or feel any ill will towards.

It is difficult for me to understand hatred. I believe that hate is an extremely strong feeling, so I am not sure if I have experienced it myself, except maybe for foods that I find disgusting, or music that irritates me, or any of the things that I generally feel annoyed about to the point where I can say that I hate it. But like I said, it’s a very strong word, so maybe I only dislike these things. Hating something to me means you would do absolutely anything to get away from it or rid of it, possibly even destroy it.

I can’t say that I have ever felt hatred towards a human. Exasperation, annoyance, anger, frustration, resignation, and disbelief are some of the negative feelings I have experienced towards people. But hatred? Why? We are all the same when you take away our money and possessions and power. Yes, there are people who are not good. And people who have caused me harm, as well as people who are very different from me and I can’t relate to. But I don’t hate them.

My heart has been broken more times than I can count over the last ten years, by various persons. Not in a romantic sense, because I am lucky that I have my best friend through all of it and he is completely incapable of breaking my heart. But many people have broken my heart with their rejection, and lack of understanding, and abandonment of our friendship. And it is my pet peeve that people should do this to me, or to anyone. Heartbreak is the worst pain, much worse than physical pain, and when you allow it, it may become all consuming.

In my Valentine’s Rant on February 13 I wrote about how you shouldn’t rely on other people for your happiness. And that all a person really has is themselves, so you have to learn to like yourself. But now I want to add to that and say that the verse: do unto others as you would have done to you, is most important. I am not a religious person. I don’t subscribe to any religion. But out of all of the sentiments in religions this statement is crucial to the survival of the human race in my opinion.

It is also crucial to me, and my values, and my ability to survive on this planet. Without empathy and compassion, humanity is doomed. That is my humble opinion. I hate to leave you with doom and gloom, so in closing I will also say, think very carefully before you hurt others. And treat others with kindness and the same respect that you expect others to give to you, and then maybe, just maybe, there is hope for our world.

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