Can you hear what you hate?

By: Stuart Knight (Founder and CEO) | November 15, 2024

Last week, I wrote a blog called “Donald Trump is Not Your Problem”, and without surprise the hate mail came in.  Nowhere in the post do I endorse the man, or suggest that he’s a good person, but that didn’t matter.  His name was mentioned without the usual vitriol at his expense, and that was enough for some.  

The actual point of the article was to say that while politicians often slow us down as conscious society progresses toward the goal of making the world a better place, they don’t have the power to fully stop us.  Collectively, regardless of their background, I was aiming to inspire my readers to remember that we all have the agency to build a planet we want to live in, no matter who is in power.

Luckily, most people got the point, but for many, the fact that I could write anything about Donald Trump that didn’t rake him through the coals for being a misogynistic, blood thirsty felon was incomprehensible.  The message of the article had nothing to do with my personal feelings about Trump as a person, which ironically are aligned with those writing the hate mail, but that didn’t matter.  It didn’t say what they needed to hear, and that was enough.

As predicted, this led to a small handful of people sending me messages with the usual list of insults, accusations and character assassinations.  Some were thoughtful with their disagreement, but they were definitely the outliers.  And to be fair, many people, from all kinds of backgrounds, felt that the blog was "exactly what people needed to hear”.  This is always the case with controversial opinions.  The lovers and haters come out in full force!  

Luckily for me, I’ve become accustomed to verbal abuse from strangers.  It’s kind of my jam!  I’ve written a blog for decades that focusses on unraveling hard truths, which has subjected me to more spontaneous attacks than I can remember, so it doesn’t really phase me anymore the way it might have in the past.  However, what does bother me tremendously is the inability of those doing the attacking to hear what I was trying to say in the first place.  I’m often left thinking, “If you actually heard what I was saying, you wouldn’t feel the need to push back on something that isn’t even there.”

Taking this further, one of my greatest pet peeves is when I aim to convey an important message to a person or group, and they end up hearing the exact opposite.  I could say the sky is blue, and get letters from strangers berating me for insinuating it was green.  It really leaves you scratching your head.  In some cases, I only have myself to blame for not articulating my point well enough, but over the years I’ve really worked at honing my skills of communication to avoid that outcome.  However, even when I lay out an argument that is crystal clear, I’ve noticed that for some it doesn’t matter how precisely I place my words, it is impossible for them to hear what I’m saying.

This happens with friends, family, intimate partners, clients, people who follow my work online, and, of course, with my children every day.  At least with my children I can point to the fact that they are still learning the intricacies of communication, but with adults, I’m left wondering if I’ve spoken a language they don’t understand.  I have ruminated on this conundrum for so many years now, that I’ve finally come to the conclusion that it has nothing to do with communication, and has everything to do with desire.  I’ve learned that if your desire to NOT hear something is strong enough, it can override any truth you want to ignore.  If your desire is to hear me say the sky is green, no matter how much I say it is blue, you will hear me say it is green.

Take the example of having to hear the horrible news of a loved one dying.  When an older person dies, it’s something we can more easily accept, as we’ve been taught this is a natural transition of life.  But when someone younger such as a husband, wife, partner or child dies unexpectedly, our automatic response is to deny it.  We convince ourselves that the person sharing the news identified the wrong body, misunderstood the information or is playing some sort of cruel joke on us.  And if knowing this is a response any one of us is capable of having, myself included, can we not agree that we may be prone to having a similar response when people share other information with us that we don’t want to hear?

Personally, I’m willing to admit that I’ve acted this way many times in the past, to my own embarrassment.  The best example of that can be found in disagreements I’ve had with my partner.  There have been many occasions where she has pointed out something about the way I’ve been behaving that I don’t want to believe, and instead of trying it on, I aim to find a million reasons why the actual truth is untrue.  I’m guessing that you being a similar flawed human being such as myself, that you are capable of doing the same?

Sadly, when we do this, we cut ourselves off from one of the greatest opportunities for growth, and as a result we stay fixed in our position as a seed in the soil, not allowing the sun to shine through.  This leaves us unable to truly experience relationships the way we claim we want to, or to reach the levels of success we hope for in business, or to create the world we say is so necessary.  But what we do get is the chance to be “right”, which for a lot of people is simply more important, even if they don’t know it.  

If you want to be more than just a seed in the ground, and are ready to begin tapping into the courage of hearing truths you may not want to hear, I’ll leave you with a general rule of thumb I try to live by.  If something a person says causes me to have a negative emotional, psychological or even physical reaction, I immediately know there is a truth I don’t want to hear, and begin searching for it. When we acknowledge that something exists, we give our eyes permission to see it.  

And when I do see it, I am forced to look at a truth that doesn’t make me feel good.  However, I’ve also come to learn that once I get through the uneasy feelings of allowing that new truth to take hold and root itself within me, I begin growing in profound ways.  In fact, it’s even liberating to get past old belief systems that I once was convinced were unchangeable.  

I begin realizing that we are all mere students of this thing called life, and in order to graduate, we have to fail a few exams along the way.

Much love,

Stuart

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