On the topic of love and hate

I recently read the following in the feed of my good Twitter friend Dondi Scumaci:

When your hate for something drives you harder than your love for something, you have lost your way.

And I do not in any way disagree with Dondi - far from it, because there is great truth in this. But still, it made me think: actually, whenever I feel that my hate is driving me anywhere, it's time to stop and reconsider what's going on. And at this point, it is surely worth considering some other driver for my actions.
Normally, I am a great supporter of reframing problems, and many will probably think that this would be an obvious case where reframing is in place - for isn't it just that easy: let the hate for something be replaced by love for the absence of this something? An obvious example: no, I do not hate the noise - I love the silence. Or the sounds of birds that I can not hear for traffic noise. Or...
And that might all be very good - many times you will find that you are not really driven by hate, but by the love of an opposition. The above example is an excellent one of the kind - only few people hate the noise because it's noise, but rather because noise makes enjoyment of silence or tweeting birds impossible.
But be careful not to blindly let irrational hate be reframed as the love of the opposite. If, for example, I suffered from arachnophobia - I'm not at all certain that it would be constructive to replace my hate for spiders with a penchant for killing them. It might be better to look closer and understand what is the basis for my arachnophobia. And perhaps I would even realize that there are also good things about spiders that I can enjoy - and get ideas to arrange my daily life so they and I do not bother each other quite as much?
(Translated from Noget om kærlighed og had)

Why? No - Why not?!

One of the most terrible phrases I know is "toxic relationships". The worst thing about it is that the phrase covers something that is at least as terrible as the expression itself. That is, people involved in relationships with other people without any positive contribution. Rather, it is the opposite; they only drain each other for energy in a non-constructive way. At worst, it is directly harmful to those involved because it harms their mental well-being.
Ideally, when we relate to other people, we do it to make a contribution to each other. To make each other better, as they say in the world of sports. We bring our diversity, enjoy the fact that others are not identical to ourselves, and together we form a unity larger than the parts that it consists of. As in the world of sports, thus also in workplaces and in relationships.
But sometimes things go wrong. Typically, it is in relationships that were originally good, but where the parties forgot what it was that back in the day made their relationship better than the parts it consisted of. Where people have found (as we say in Danish) the holes in the cheese, focused on them and let them grow so big that it is impossible to see what one once saw. Colleagues, who once worked well together, are now stuck in a psychologically bad work environment that they basically created together. Married couples who promised each other to love and to cherish each other until death did them part, but now live together as cat and dog, where people around them hardly remember when the fighting parties recently exchanged a loving word.
And you can ask yourself: why? Why do colleagues insist on ignoring that the salary they earn is expensive money to pay for the lack of psychological welfare that the get in return? Why do couples stay together for the sake of their children, but do the children no good by letting them experience Mum and Dad treat each other in a way that has nothing to do with loving relationships?
But maybe you should rather ask yourself: why not? Why do they not get together, look at each other and one self and consider what in the world they are doing? And start getting back to what initially made them know the other party as someone who could contribute to a relationship that was larger than its individual parts?
See, "why not" is probably the better question. And it should not be harder to ask yourself or others than "why?"
(Translated from Hvorfor? Nej, hvorfor ikke?!, originally published February 22nd, 2018)

The wolf we feed

They say that inside all of us, we carry with us two wolves who fight each other. One represents negative things such as anger, envy, sorrow, regret, arrogance, self pity, guilt, hatred, lies, doubt and egoism, whereas the other represents positive things such as faith, hope, love, peach, humility, friendliness, empathy, generosity and truth.
And the question, which wolf will win the fight, is quite easily answered - so easily that it requires no further explanation. The wolf you feed will win.
So let this be a call to action for all of us. Let's feed our positive wolf. Make room for and nurture faith, hope, love, peach, humility, friendliness, empathy, generosity and truth.
Because all of us benefit from other people feeding their positive wolf.
And because we to our surroundings are a part of all of those, who should feed the positive wolf for other people to benefit from it.
(Translated from Den ulv, vi fodrer, originally published May 31st, 2017)

All people are customers

In our current, highly commercialised society, with its extensive freedom of choice everywhere, we have to realise that all people are customers - in the sense that in virtually every relationship we are part of, we can consider ourselves as items that we have to make available for sale. If I want a job, I must make my skills marketable; if I want to socialise, I must make myself sufficiently interesting to be let in; if I want to enter into a relationship with a significant other, I must sell my qualities to this person.
We are however in the situation that as citizens, we do not have to sell us to the nation; just like parents in typical families have a monopoly on the product they offer to their children - and we can also be so fortunate that through an advantageous sale we have made earlier, we live on old market value - there are both employment relationships and interpersonal relationships that exist on the inertia inherent in such relationships - but basically, one can just as well come to terms with it: I am a commodity, my surroundings are my customers, and my relationships to them depend on my market value in their opinion. And, of course, the other way around - for my outside world are also goods, I am their customer, and my inclination to buy depends on their market value in my eyes.
It may be a bitter pill to swallow - and of course you can try arguments like "but my friends accept me for who I am". Of course. Because you are worth it. Or - which should be a matter of particular reflection - because you are still selling on the basis that at an earlier stage, you had a market value, which was sufficiently high for you to still enjoy its afterglow...
(Translated from Alt er kunder, originally published September 12th, 2013)