Monthly Archives: November 2020

Love Thy Enemy

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What have I learned from the people who hurt me and why do I still hold love in my heart for them?

  • I have developed a stronger and deeper faith in Baha’u’llah as the Great Teacher for our age.
  • I have gained more empathy and compassion for others (including myself).
  • I’m become more humble (although there’s definitely room for improvement here).
  • I have learned more patience.

Each time I have been hurt, I have learned something about myself and about humanity. I choose to view those experiences as an opportunity to grow. I am more an optimist about the future of humanity than I ever have been before. Our struggles have an ultimate purpose: the development of an ever-advancing global civilization. I am but a very small part of that, as we all are.

I don’t want to say too much about how I have been hurt, but some might wonder if those hurts were really so bad if I can be so positive about them. The answer will always be relative; what hurts me may not hurt you and what hurts you may not hurt me. Nevertheless, some of those hurts are objectively severe by any standards. I struggle every day with traumas from those hurts.

I sometimes wonder why I was able to withstand and then grow from those hurts. I want to credit that resilience mostly to how I was raised by my incredible parents, Valerie Senyk and Garry Berteig. There are probably other factors, but they both demonstrated in words and actions a standard that I have always admired and tried to live up to myself. They introduced me to the Baha’i Faith and the incredible principles and guidance that gave me a growth mindset. They supported me through many of the hardships that I have experienced. Thanks!

As a result, I don’t have enemies. There is no one that I hate. There is no one that I wish vengeance upon. There is no one that I will not try to empathize with. Even those who gave me some of my worst hurts, with the deepest, most permanent damage… I wish them well, and I hope their life is full of love, healing and progress.

What is Identity

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(First posted on Facebook 5years ago.)

If we have an eternal soul that transcends death, then the soul is what matters and it is the soul that defines our identity. On the other hand, if all we have is our material existence, then the form of our material existence matters.

It matters if you are fat or thin. It matters if you are black or white. It matters if you are strong or weak. It matters if you are wealthy or not. These are all material attributes.

If we are purely material, then there is no basis to believe in human dignity. Materialism is nihilism and anti-identity: we are merely atoms and molecules and cellular processes and heat. Which is why so much discussion around identity in our society concerns the trivial made large. Skin color. Sexual preferences. Gender. Nationhood. Class. Membership. Job title.

We desperately grasp at these insignificances because we are afraid of the significant: the existence of the soul. Yet we also ignore the void that such denial leaves. We do so by shouting ever louder that our self-determined identity matters.

It does not.

The only identity that matters is our spiritual identity: our virtues developed by sacrificing all those trivial aspects of identity that our materialistic society is so keen on using to segment us into sliver-sized markets while selling stuff to stuff the unstuffable void. The driving force of this segmentation is the death of death.

Death used to be a passage to a greater stage. Now death is the end of our existence. Death, too, is sold. Avoid death at all costs or embrace it early – the choice is yours. This trivialization of death supports the narrative of material identity.