Misery Loves Company

“People who are hurting tend to hurt other people,” my mom says while holding me close and listening to me cry about the day’s events.

“Why?” I ask in between sobs.

“Because they are just unhappy with their own lives and feel miserable, they choose to make other people feel bad about themselves. It’s a vicious cycle, and misery loves company.”

It took me many years to fully understand what my mom was saying in those moments of desperation and utter sadness when I was a teenager. I fully understood the impact of her words and the lesson she was trying to teach me only in my late twenties while living alone. 

The takeaway is to take everything people say with a grain of salt because their opinions will not matter in ten years. They are irrelevant.

Misery does, in fact, love company, and due to the ever-changing economy, rising cost of living, unemployment, the pandemic, and advancements in technology, it has become so much easier to spread hate worldwide. 

How I respond to haters

Most people don’t even bat an eyelash when throwing insults at strangers on the internet. I have noticed that many are angry, hateful, and very ignorant of their own biases. They often judge people without a second thought, based on their profile picture and the content on their page.

Whenever people insult me on Instagram for commenting and leaving an opinion on a post, I try to tackle their hate, judgment, and ignorance with kindness and compassion. I raise awareness of why some people are overweight or prefer to surround themselves with cats rather than people.

People don’t care to understand the struggles of other people. I have noticed supervisors do the same thing and discriminate against an employee when it is illegal to do so in the working environment, but that doesn’t stop them from finding ways to make an employee feel crappy.

So when these types of situations and circumstances occur, I try to reframe the negativity by pointing out how cruel they are by saying, “God bless your hateful, ignorant, and miserable soul.” Then, I proceed by letting them know about how certain health conditions can impact a person’s looks by affecting their weight and skin in a variety of different ways, such as taking mental health medications,  having a vitamin deficiency,  an autoimmune disorder, or a hormone imbalance such as a thyroid condition. 

I ask them to educate themselves further on this topic before automatically spewing their hate toward people they don’t know on the internet. Usually, when I respond to these types of offensive comments with kindness and awareness, many people end up not responding, which leads me to think that, perhaps, they will think twice before choosing violence and responding to someone’s opinion with mean comments the next time.

Our responsibility

Everyone we meet in life is fighting an unknown battle, one we know nothing about. We must do better as a society if we wish to have any hope for future generations. We must consider what type of example we are setting for our children by exhibiting bullying behavior towards strangers. 

It all starts at home, with the example set by the children’s family members. 

They come into this world already knowing how to love, and unfortunately, it is ultimately the people we surround ourselves with who choose to teach us how to hate, based on how the world treats us as individuals.