Sophie Heawood: a little bit of hatred can take you a long way

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/24/-sp-hatred-revenge-glitter-sophie-heawood

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It’s been a difficult week. Just when I thought I’d found the man who could make my heart sing, he ran off, moaning that things had got far more serious than he had ever anticipated and that he only saw this as a bit of holiday fun. I’ve never actually met him, or even spoken to him, but 22-year-old Mathew Carpenter recently launched a website called Ship Your Enemies Glitter, promising to send an envelope full of “fucking annoying glitter” to the person of your choice, along with a short, insulting note. Oh my God, this idea spoke to me.

The plan was that the recipient would open the envelope and the “craft herpes”, as the website described it, would go all over them and their property, and get stuck in everything, ruining their day. It was to be the perfect sort of friendly violence, like being attacked by fairydust or assaulted by a small teddy bear.

Within days, however, the site had gone viral, the media had identified Carpenter, and he admitted he couldn’t cope with the unexpected volume of orders for the “horrible product” he had invented, so he was selling the business. I was devastated. I hadn’t even had time to decide which of my nemeses would be receiving an envelope full of sparkly crap and the written notification that they were a terrible person.

I know, I know. I have read that aphorism many times, the one about how holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I understand its spiritual wisdom. I have tried to make peace, in my head, with the small number of people in my life, or in my past, who have done me wrong. I have tried, endlessly, to work out my own wrongs, too.

It’s just that, sometimes, the hatred you thought you had let go of turns out only to have been on a seasonal migration, and comes right back again. And the truth is that you rather enjoy its company. I have come to realise, having tried to be some kind of half-hearted Buddhist/Christian/Mostly Nice Person for most of my life, that a little bit of hatred can take you a long way.

We’re talking just enough hate towards someone or other – the lover who broke your heart, the colleague who bullied you – that after you’re done feeling hopeless about it, you can turn the corner into feeling vengeful, and make sure that anyone whose happiness depends on your failure is proved hilariously wrong. No self-help book will admit this, but it’s one of the most powerful motivational techniques known to man.

As a writer, I’ve interviewed a lot of successful people – people who have worked their backsides off for 20 years to go from nothing to household names, bestselling writers, Grammy award winners – and it turns out that their route to success has one crucial thing in common. It wasn’t a childhood spent being told they were clever little darlings, or a belief in some higher power, or the ingestion of raw superfoods. It was the desire to piss off some vicious moron from their past who had told them they’d never amount to anything, by becoming more successful than the moron could have believed possible. And then a bit more successful than that, just to rub it in the moron’s face, for luck. Writing those brilliant books, making those enriching TV shows: these people were doing this simply to avenge a nemesis.

(It’s funny, because I sometimes wonder, while writing in this newspaper, if my old headmaster might be reading it – a man who once said I’d be lucky to get anywhere in regional journalism. Because I’d just like to give him a big old friendly wave. Hello!)

I remember Charlotte Church saying that singers were supposed to avoid dairy products because they were thought to cause phlegm, but that, personally, she liked a bit of phlegm in her throat, just to coat her tremendous voice a little. I feel the same way about living a good life, full of love and abundance and magnificence. And just that little, lubricating dollop of hate.

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