In the first analogy, you love the garden, but also hate it. That is, you love the garden’s beauty, but you hate how the garden is right now. In the second analogy, you learned to hate what your beloved hates about you, and learned to love what she loves about you.
This is just like how a healthy Christian loves himself. He loves himself because he loves God and is loved by God, but he hates himself because of the many ways he is so ugly, and can still become more ugly, before his Beloved, and therefore with God’s help he removes and avoids what makes him ugly before God:
sin. The Christian hates what makes him susceptible to sin, his
concupiscence because of original sin’s effect on all men. He also does good, prays a lot, and develops his faith, hope, and charity, even if he does not want to do them, because those are what God loves. That’s why the saints’ hatred on themselves and their discipline are so alarming: because they love God and themselves so much that they will do anything, even deprive and discipline themselves, to be with Him and be eternally joyful. Read how St. Louis de Montfort sees our condition here on earth:
Our soul, being united to our body, has become so carnal that it has been called flesh. “All flesh had corrupted its way”. Pride and blindness of spirit, hardness of heart, weakness and inconstancy of soul, evil inclinations, rebellious passions, ailments of the body, - these are all we can call our own. By nature we are prouder than peacocks, we cling to the earth more than toads, we are more base than goats, more envious than serpents, greedier than pigs, fiercer than tigers, lazier than tortoises, weaker than reeds, and more changeable than weather-cocks. We have in us nothing but sin, and deserve only the wrath of God and the eternity of hell. (
Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin)
As Jesus said: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away…and if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matthew 5:29-30).
So how does this compare with the hatred of the insecure and pessimistic? Going back to the analogy of the garden, it is like someone who received the garden but is either too lazy or too afraid of the snakes and other dangers in the garden to make it better. And with the analogy of the teenage romance, it is like a guy who either loves his smokes, his messy clothes, and his oggling of girls more than the cheerleader, or he simply cannot get over the feeling that he does not deserve her and thus does not even try to pursue her. In both cases, they like maintaining the status quo more than anything.
The Christian loves himself for what God loves in him now, and for what he can be in God, and hates whatever that can hinder that, including himself. The pessimist and insecure loves how he is now, no matter how sad his condition is currently, because he hates the risk and effort of having faith in and loving God. The pessimist and insecure would rather have the pitiful happiness and comfort he has right now than risk a perceived possible losing of that happiness.
For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 16:25)
So what are the practical aspects of this? What do we teach the insecure and pessimist?
Well first of all we must determine whether they are suicidal or have any psychiatric problems. If they are, then they should be immediately referred for psychiatric evaluation.
Barring the above, the two most important things to teach them and cultivate in them would be
a great confidence in God’s love and
a great love for suffering. From personal experience, these are the two pillars on which they will rest so firmly, that they will not succumb to the most severe trials.
They must focus on the breadth and depth of God’s love for them, for, as I had said, this will put all their other loves and hates into perspective, and will give them supernatural courage. Praying the Rosary or the practice of
Lectio Divina will definitely help here.
This courage must be tempered by a love of the Crucified One and
the doctrine of redemptive suffering. The pessimist and the insecure go through lots of pain due to their sensitivity to emotional pain and disappointment (I should know), and thus they must both be strengthened to endure these pains, and at the same time use them profitably. On this aspect, I would suggest starting by praying the
Hours of the Cross, which recalls the hours of the Way of the Cross.
For more information, please read on the
melancholic temperament, the temperament of most pessimists and insecure people.
God bless you.
The denial of the sense of accomplishment has a larger effect it seems on men, in part because they are supposed to be proving themselves to, well, everyone: themselves, their “tribe” (to determine standing), their enemies (to better protect their family), and to the ladies (for obvious reasons). quashing this drive, particularly when it may be a struggle to fulfill is insanity, not holiness. Holiness is taming it, controlling it.
That may have confused you much, but let me first point something. The opposite of hate is not love, and love is not the opposite of hate. In fact, they are the opposite sides of the same coin. Yes, you heard that right. You cannot love without hating, and you cannot hate without loving. One cannot exist without the other. This is because to love is to polarize your whole being towards a perceived good, and therefore you are also polarized against a perceived evil. If you love someone, then you hate what will harm your beloved, right? Even in those who have a disease-like hate for something, including themselves (eg. those with inferiority complexes or severe insecurity) they love something. Indeed, the greater the hate, the greater the love. And what they love is themselves.