hate responsibly

Things you don't like are more powerful than things you do like. Think about your job, and then agree with me: collectively--and perhaps individually--we are making more money hating what we are doing than by loving all the way to the bank.

Even if we are self-employed, if we chose our profession deliberately, and if we honestly love what we are doing with a passion: there are aspects of our work that we don't enjoy. We hate firing people, for instance. We despise pouring over our income taxes. Or, we aren't too ecstatic about a difficult customer stealing our precious time. You may be the grand master of delegating unwanted tasks but if you are telling me you love everything you do--all day, every day, and everybody you are dealing with--you are losing credibility rapidly.

It is similar with children. We love our offspring, sure, but do you truly LOVE dealing with every issue your teenage kids bring up? Rubbish! They're confronting us with ample material we can hate. Pulling a condom out of your 14-year old daughter's jeans pocket while doing the laundry or discovering your son's stash of weed in his chest of drawers calls for conversations you might file away labeled as 'tough love,' while the brats are increasingly convinced how much you must be hating them. No, we don't love everything we say we love.

Our work entails details we are not too thrilled about. There are elements we hate. And we are doing it anyway. Hatred for disliked parts of our jobs has become integrated in our overall passion for the things we do. Long ago we may have stopped dissecting the emotional layers of our work world, separating the likes from the dislikes. We are simply lacking the time for silly exercises like that and besides, it's superfluous. The work must be done anyway. The brood wants to be raised (they disagree, though). There is no reason for us to stop doing what we hate, and we won't.

On the contrary, we are making money by hating things. To a certain degree, hatred has a cash value attached to it for every one of us. Talk about peace and love as much as you want but please do tell me, what percentage of your rent or mortgage payment requires from you the discipline to do what you are hating. That works the other way around as well. We have disciplined ourselves to hate what we are doing, because we are aware of its value.

More than 87% of Americans hate their jobs. That means the overwhelming majority pays bills with the cash equivalent of hatred. Love doesn't seem to be as trustworthy or as bankable as hatred. Hey, I didn't invent this idea! Neither am I trying to convince you of anything. I am stating facts that others--Forbes magazine, for example--have gathered, and I am offering you an unusual perspective.

Did I suggest you should be hating your job instead of loving it? Nonsense! I am writing about the often painful reality of hatred for our jobs. Pointing out alternative options for the interpretation of that reality, is my aim.

Oh, I know you don't enjoy hearing this. I could sell so many more copies of my book by telling you instead what's pleasing to your ears. Sorry, I won't harass you for the umptieth time with motivational syrup how doing what you love will make you rich by Tuesday afternoon. I am confident you'll find enough of that gooey stuff elsewhere. I prefer talking about subjects that stink.

Back to hatred. Making money with hatred is one thing, but our relationship with subjects of hatred is deeper than love for money.

Power.

A common opinion states that individuals are continuously on a quest for power. Power over other people (one reason to make children, if you are allergic to cat dander). Power over money. Power over a piece of the environment.

True, we are freaks, but I disagree with the general theory that human beings are seeking power. If we did, why are so many of us settling for so little of it? No, the average person is satisfied wielding an ounce of power necessary to report her neighbor's messy front yard to the homeowners' assassination. Beyond that, we prefer secondhand power: we are in awe about OTHER people's power or with the power we believe they have.

The masses enjoy the small mindedness of admiring those in power positions, and we love to see some of those who climbed high drop out of power. The secondhand power trip permits our own behinds to stay in life's security zone. Fascination with power cannot be fully understood if we leave out the thrill the mob derives from the destruction of power.

From the blood drenched French Revolution and the murder of the Russian Czar family, to a time when every schmuck feels entitled to limiting the salaries of "greedy" executives in the ivory towers of "evil powerful" corporations--witnessing the so-called powerful fail is equally entertaining to us as it is to cheer them on while they are rising stars. No, baby, most of us do not yearn for such power. Most of us don't have the sick desire to fall victim to our neurotic ilk. And then, that describes a certain form of power we are milking out of a status that pretends to be powerless, or do we not?

But I digress.

"Things we don't like are more powerful," or so I said. Why? Because we are not actively hating anything. Hating is a passive act. Say wha ...? In our younger--and arguably dumber--years some of us were victims of love. We "fell" in love until we fell out of it, involuntarily. As if the objects of our love--girl, car, beer, boy, motorcycle, etc.--had had the slightest power over us and over the way we chose to feel. We were craving a powerful car under our scrawny arses precisely because we lacked the balls to assume power over those feelings and emotions that we believed cars and girls had over us.

We did not love. That stuff "made us" love it. Small wonder we began a frustrating and eventually unsuccessful quest of unearthing the ultimate IT (job, house, partner, religion, anything). Pretty pathetic. Meanwhile, a bunch of us have figured out that our love interests happen to be rather brief infatuations unless we inject an active element. We started to choose ("Honey, I'd love to go to Disneyland!"), and we have experienced some value in actively following through. We have discovered how to love by choice. Damn yeah, there can be freedom in it!

Things we hate are so powerful because we don't hate anything by choice: what we are hating seems to make us hate it. "Honey, let's hate the Jews." That's not how NAZI Germany's dogged family daddies succeeded murdering 6,000,000 individuals. Seriously, the good old German butchers were convinced IT happened to THEM as it did to Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, intellectuals, artists, and countless others who were seen as responsible for their executioners' deeds.

"I hate my job," means I am not responsible for hating my job. It suggests my job is so bad that I am practically forced to hate what I do. And it means I believe in the higher power of the things I hate. What I hate determines my life. If I am holding down a job I can hate, I am relatively safe. Hatred is the provider for nations. It buys lunch.

"Dear Lord, don't ever let us run out of stuff we can hate!" It's the prayer of journalists who desire to sell copy. You, too, ought to be grateful for work you can hate passionately. The public is getting giddy about the future creation of millions of hated jobs, since we know that economies are falling apart when our collective and personal hatred drops to mediocre regions.

On a personal level, that translates to an increase of income and to improved happiness if you can manage to discover more work projects you can hate. Double that offer if you bring yourself to the realization that the power behind the scenes is yours.

Egbert Sukop

P.S.: My book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is now available on Amazon.com. As rebellious and provocative as it is, you should not read this disturbing material. Not you!