Can you not see the good?

Does your hate blind you so intensely?

I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a posting by the wife of Slayer guitarist Kerry King. I forget the exact details but basically a dog had been hit by a car not 10 minutes from where they live, and she and Kerry left the house to go in search of the dog to rescue it. I don’t know Kerry at all, apart from his guitar playing and songwriting in Slayer. There’s lots of accounts out there that he’s an asshole. And maybe he is. But for him to disrupt his life to go in search of an injured dog to try to save it? That’s pretty awesome.

I’m no fan of Barack Obama. But I’ve seen many pictures of him with his wife, Michelle. The way he holds her hand, the way he looks in her eyes. This man truly loves his wife. So many people at that level of society have sham or failing marriages, but here’s someone that’s in one of the most pressure-filled jobs in the world, and she stands by him and gives him strength, and by all accounts their 25-year marriage is strong . His love for her is evident, if you just take a moment and observe. I think that’s pretty damn cool.

Can you do this?

Can you step back and look at the things you hate, and find something redeeming in them?

Find something human in them?

And if you can find one thing, can you find another?

This isn’t to say you should ignore the bad, but maybe if you spend just a fraction of time finding love as you do seething in hate, maybe that might help ease some of the pain and tension.