It’s so easy to get angry. Yes it is. All you have to do is think of all the things you don’t think you deserve to happen to you, then the person you considered one of the most important in your life—put them together and you get the biggest heartbreak and disappointment in your life. So it’s easy to hate that person; it’s natural to get angry and think of ways to get even. It’s human instinct to protect ourselves from being hurt whether physically or emotionally because that’s what we do to survive.

But once you allow yourself to hate something or someone, you start to nurture it. Whether you admit it or not, you feed it little by little and the resentment motivates you. It may motivate you to try to become better, to take risks, try something new and change our life entirely—but resentment is still resentment. If there is anything worse than not being motivated by anything at all, it’s being motivated by anger and hate.

One of the most difficult things to achieve, especially under special circumstances, is acceptance. It’s so easy to tell other people to accept things and accept life, but is there really an individual out there who has not shed a tear after getting his or her heart broken? Have we not hoped at least once that our misfortunes are all a bad dream and that we will eventually wake up from?

Anger may be the shortcut to Acceptance, but if we really want to find peace and be happy, we have to go through the long journey of understanding ourselves and others with an open mind and a considerate heart—no matter how hard it is. And we all know that it will be hard. It will be the most difficult thing we’ll ever do.

You will cry at random times of the day. You will feel stupid and cheated. You will doubt yourself and your own strength. You will even hate yourself. You will feel lonely for a long time. But loneliness doesn’t have to be accompanied by bitterness. Make friends with it and understand it. Be comfortable with loneliness and deal with it. But never let Hate follow you around or hover above you like a vulture. Being lonely doesn’t always mean closing yourself and your heart to everyone else. Sometimes it just means allowing yourself to feel.

When you’re lonely, it’s so easy to be angry to forget about things and people. It’s easy to put the blame on others and consider them as scums when they hurt us. But I refuse to take the easy way out. I choose to take the high road. I will strive every day to rid myself of anger and channel my energy into more positive things. It will be difficult to do with a broken heart and an injured spirit, but I will take every day as a challenge.

And I hope you do the same. Every day, choose not to be angry. Choose not to hate.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

—Martin Luther King