Dear friend,

If you are pursuing your life’s passion — you will always find someone to hate you for it.

1. What is a hater?

A hater is someone who likes to spew poison onto others. A hater is someone who drinks poison and wishes that the other person dies.

A hater is a sad soul. A hater is a small person. A hater is someone who hasn’t achieved his fullest potential in life— and therefore feels pain when he sees other people pursuing their personal maximum in life.

A hater is someone we should pity — like a poor puppy. Or when necessary, a hater is someone we should just ignore.

2. Greatness of soul is ignoring others

Let me tell you a story of Cato (the Stoic saint).

He was in a Roman forum, and some man spat on his face. Cato pretended he didn’t even notice. He wiped away the spit, and moved on.

Someone then asked Cato: “CATO! Aren’t you going to punish that man for spitting on you?” Cato then (magnanimously) says, ‘I don’t remember being spit on.’

Cato showed greatness of soul in not even acknowledging being spat upon. He didn’t even ‘forgive’ the person. Because you cannot ‘forgive’ someone if you ignore small trifles.

So now, for me — I don’t even ‘forgive’ people. Because I don’t even notice them. For me, a hater is someone not even worth a single iota or .0000001% of your attention. If someone is hating on you, you can use your mental energy for better things— making more art, thinking, writing, and sharing love with others.

3. Ignore your haters

So friend the sum of my letter to you is this: just ignore your haters.

That means, if you upload a photo or a blog post or publish any piece of art— just don’t read the comments. Because why do you care whether others like your work or not? If you like your own work— isn’t that enough for you?

If you read comments, it means that you care too much whether others like you (or hate you). If you really didn’t care what others thought of you (whether positive or negative) — you wouldn’t read comments.

4. Why do you care what others think of your photography or art?

Never crowd-source your self esteem. Have faith in yourself friend, stay true to your inner artistic vision, and when it comes to art, just treat it like playing— be a big ass kid with a camera, or a paintbrush.

Photography is playing.

Be strong,
Eric