#6: KUMALMA KA: An open letter to people who, apparently and/or allegedly, have lots of haters

Uunahan na kita, wala akong alam at malamang puro assumption lang tong isusulat ko na ito. Wala akong karapatang unahan ka sa mga desisyon mo gawa ng hindi ko nga naman naiintindihan eksakto kung ano ang sitwasyon mo. Pero sana pakinggan mo pa rin tong sasabihin ko.

1. You think you have haters, but you don't.

Okay, people may hate your guts. They may hate every little thing you do or say. They may even be legitimately insecure of you. But they are not YOUR HATERS.

You are simply not that special to have your own line of haters. Sure, you're too loud, too annoying, too smart, too stupid, too pretty, too ugly, too quiet, too mahangin, etc., and people hate you for it, but that only means there is hate DIRECTED towards the things that you do or say, not that you HAVE people WITH hate who hate YOU. Magkaiba 'yun.

The operating words here are those possessive in nature. “Peter hates it when I...” is hella different from “Peter is my hater”. I'm no linguistics expert, and to be honest I haven't really looked into the linguistic psychology of this, but I'm making sense, right?

2. Because you don't own them, they are not yours.

I've read somewhere that you can never really own someone, but you can have the next best thing: someone devoting to you the universally most important thing they own-- their time. I personally think that that is a general rule of the universe. In application, it shows that you do not HAVE haters because these people you claim to be your haters do not actually allot that much time of their lives hating you, just in that single moment when you said something or did something they didn't like. Again, you are not that special. People may hate you and every last bit of you, but they are definitely not devoting every waking moment of their lives hating you.

3. People are not your haters inasmuch as you are not someone else's hater, unless you are.

You may hate people as much as they hate you, but you are not THEIR haters. They do not own you as a hater as much as you don't own them as your haters. Besides, in the above sense, do you want people owning you because you spend your time occupied by the thought of them? Unless, of course, YOU DO devote your every waking moment to hating them.

4. Also, you are only as concerned with having haters as much as you are hating someone else.

You are only as concerned with the hate that you receive as much as you give it. This is because if you hate someone, you most probably say terrible things about him or her, sometimes even things you don't want to be on the receiving end of. Kinda like reversed “do unto others yadda yadda”. So when you learn that someone hated something you said or did, you start thinking about the rest of that story, filling in the blanks but in your own terms, as in “WWIHD” (What Would I Have Done). If you were the type who gossips or rants a lot on social media, you tense up and get really concerned. This most often leads to you doing more stupid things people will hate you for, thus, a vicious cycle.

5. Tone down the sour-graping.

Don't go around saying, “ang dami ko namang haters” because seriously, that is one sure fire way to earn them. If you learn that people hate you, you can always just accept it and deal with it on your own or with a few friends. You don't have to go on every social media available, sharing or posting “insecurity is a disease, get well soon bitch” because it's hella annoying. Also, it's an example of the above, a stupid thing people will hate you more for.

And, let's face it: you're saying, “hate me all you want” but you're thinking, “please don't hate me as much.”

6. We're adults. KUMALMA KA.

If the above points have unsuccessfully gotten into you, at least let this last one in. We are adults, goddamnit. Maybe you got beaten up or online-shamed in high school, but it's different now. No one is going to go Mean Girls around you. No one is going to publicly humiliate you to purposefully damage you. No one is going to prank you on your birthday. No one is going to write bad stuff if you ask them to give you a graduation dedication. Mature people don't form small, cliched hate groups in college or at work anymore.

  The reason you are thinking that the world is against you is that maybe YOU are against the world. Adults don't hate as much as you think they do. You are an adult, right?