Now I’m not talking about irrational fear, fear that people should see a psychiatrist about. I’m talking about normal everyday justifiable fear. I found that by having a better understanding of the things that I feared, I was able to fear them less. I also realized that things that caused me fear, are not as dangerous as I let myself imagine. And experience has taught me that people are not as powerful in determining my life as I once gave them credit for. So, I was able to mitigate the fears I had of people and things. And I allowed myself the privilege of no longer hating them.

Still there was the ultimate fear of death. A fear that allows others to control us. The fear that leads many to religion. As it did me. As a child, I was taught to fear death. And of course, the Sunday school teacher who taught me to fear death, had an answer for this fear. It was to completely trust in what she was teaching me, about what others had taught her. Later in life, when I had actually conceived my morality, I turned once more to the people who said that they had all of the answers. This turned out to be a mistake. I found that they feared death more than the Atheist, who only saw oblivion in the end. That the books they worshiped were full of inconsistencies and illogical assumptions. Something which grated in my mind. So, I became an Atheist.

As an Atheist, I was free to think. I was able to consider whether the paradigms that guided my life were valid and logical, or just what others had programmed into me. Still, I found that it did not give me the answers I sought. I continued to explore revealed religions, to see if I could find one that was logical. I came across Buddhism. The Buddha taught that a religion had to be logical. At last, I thought, I found a religion that made sense. I was a Buddhist for many years. Then I had an epiphany. For a Buddhist to become enlightened, there had to be something outside of them that could give them the enlightenment. That is when I discovered God. Not the anthropomorphic God of Abraham, but an essence in the universe that just is.

This was a profound insight for me. While a Buddhist, I had learned to accept things as they were. And by accepting God as God is, rather than how I wanted God to be, I found many of the answers to the questions I had been asking all of my life. Knowing that there was something bigger than me, that was able to understand me and others, gave me peace. I no longer feared death. For if there is a God, then death is nothing to fear. Life is just something that God creates for some purpose. For life to exist, than there must be death. Since there is a God, then death has a purpose. So, it is nothing to fear. And there is nothing to fear in the supernatural, since there is no supernatural, just God. Without fear of death, there was no longer a good reason to hate.

Admittedly, I still fear and hate pain. I am still working on getting rid of that fear. What is important at this point, is that I am working on getting rid of my fears so that I hate less. By hating less, I am improving my life. And hopefully, the lives of the people around me.