If that title triggers you, read it again, carefully. Note that I didn’t say that you shouldn’t hate things. I personally think that’s a silly thing to say: we all hate stuff. People hate things, it’s one of the things our brains do. You’re going to have your own feelings, and feelings are valid. You can no more stop hating something than you can stop being sad or feeling grief. Plus, it would be the height of irony for you to hate your own hate. So, no: you will hate things.

Hating, however, doesn’t work. It isn’t productive. You might, if you know the quote, go first to Martin Luther King: “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”. And he’s right, but I think he didn’t go far enough. What I would have said is “Hate cannot produce any positive results at all in anybody, including yourself”. Am I exaggerating? I actually don’t think I am.

Think about your own life. Imagine times where you really hated something, and then you actually tried to get something done out of that place of hate. Imagine a time when you started a conversation with someone you hate, and let that hate out into your voice. I won’t presume to guess how that went for you, but I will tell you how it’s gone for me: not well. It turns out - and there is science to back this up - that once somebody can tell that you hate them, you lose all ability to make any change in that person. The old saying about “talking to a brick wall” is entirely apt.

Now, you may counter by saying something like “we have to fight for what we believe in”, and I absolutely would agree. Acting in a way that produces change in ourselves and others for the common good is a noble pursuit. But doing it in a way that is doomed to failure would be like Quixote tilting at his windmills. In fact, I would argue that pursuing any change from a place of hate is not only useless but might, actually, if inartfully done, make the problem worse. Imagine letting loose a person who believes in the right to abortion and has a heart filled with hate about those who don’t, to knock on doors in a rich neighborhood. Do you think that person will convince anyone? Can you imagine that they might actually cause those they meet to retreat further into their opinions? I can.

So, we must allow ourselves to hate, but we cannot act out of that hate. If you hate Donald Trump, I feel your pain. If you hate all Republicans, or all men, or if right now you hate all people, my heart goes out to you. But if you walk into the world wearing that hate on your shoulder, and if you project it onto others, then absolutely nothing good will come of it. And I think it’s worth considering where that hate comes from and whether you really want to carry it around. After all, if, as I claim, it isn’t doing anyone else any good, then the only person left it could benefit is you. Does it? Do you feel better because you hate? Maybe you do; I’m not you.

We must work for change. We can be angry; we can be sad. We can be hopeful. We can work for change; we can insist on change. We can stand still in our beliefs and let the world do what it wants with us. We can sit, calmly, and refuse to indulge in misogyny, in racism, in nationalism. We can do all that with a fierceness and an insistence and a bravery. But once we act out of hate, we are wasting our time.