You Don't Hate It (You Hate Your Experience of It)
On how lazy language traps us in false identities and closes doors we never meant to shut
“I hate running.”
Such a simple sentence. You’ve probably said something similar about dozens of activities, foods, genres of music, types of people. We throw these declarations around casually, as if they’re reporting objective facts about the world rather than describing temporary states of our subjective experience.
But language has consequences beyond our intention to convey information. When you say “I hate running,” you’re not just describing a feeling. You’re constructing an identity. You’re becoming the person who hates running. You’re closing a door and declaring to yourself and anyone listening that this door is now part of the permanent architecture of who you are.
Maybe you don’t actually hate running. What if you hate how running felt the one time you tried it after years of sedentary living? What if you hate the specific way you were forced to run in gym class as a child? What if you hate feeling incompetent at something while you’re learning it?
These are radically different things than hating running itself. But we collapse them all into “I hate running” because precision requires more effort than we’re willing to invest in describing our experience.
The Stoics were obsessed with precision in language, though not for the reasons modern people might assume. They weren’t pedants concerned with grammatical correctness. They understood that imprecise language produces imprecise thinking, which produces limited lives.
Epictetus taught his students to pay careful attention to their “impressions,” which we might translate as the immediate judgments we make about our experience. He noticed that people move instantly from “this feels difficult” to “I can’t do this” to “I’m not the kind of person who does things like this.” Each step moves further from actual experience into constructed identity, and most people make all three steps unconsciously.
His intervention was simple: catch the impression before it calcifies into identity. Notice the gap between “this feels difficult right now” and “I hate this.” In that gap lives freedom, the possibility of relating to your experience differently than your immediate reaction suggests.
When you say “I hate running,” what are you actually experiencing? Examine it closely. Maybe your lungs burn. Maybe your legs ache. Maybe you feel self-conscious running in public. Maybe you’re bored running alone. Maybe you remember being humiliated during a race as a child and that memory is still contaminating your current experience.
All of these are specific, addressable things. Lung capacity builds with practice. Muscle soreness is temporary and becomes less severe as you adapt. Self-consciousness can be managed through different environments or times of day. Boredom can be addressed through music, podcasts, or running with others. Old memories can be examined and separated from present experience.
But when you collapse all of this complexity into “I hate running,” you’ve declared the problem unsolvable. You’ve made it about essential incompatibility between you and the activity rather than about specific, temporary challenges that might be addressed.
This collapse happens constantly with far more important things than running.
“I hate public speaking” might mean: I haven’t practiced enough to feel competent, I had one bad experience that’s defining all future experiences, I’m comparing my internal anxiety to others’ external composure, I’m trying to be someone I’m not instead of speaking as myself.
“I hate conflict” might mean: I never learned how to disagree without feeling threatened, I associate conflict with violence from my childhood, I fear losing relationships more than I value honesty, I haven’t developed skills for productive disagreement.
“I hate networking” might mean: I feel inauthentic in professional contexts, I don’t know how to start conversations with strangers, I’m exhausted by performing interest in people’s work, I’ve never actually tried networking in ways that align with my natural communication style.
Each of these specific things can be worked with, learned about, potentially changed. But “I hate X” closes investigation. It transforms a challenge into an identity. It makes permanent what might be temporary. It declares essential what might be circumstantial.
Marcus Aurelius understood how language shapes perception. He wrote extensively about the importance of describing things accurately rather than dramatically. When something bad happened, he practiced describing it in neutral terms rather than catastrophic ones. Not “this is a disaster” but “this is an obstacle that requires a response.”
This wasn’t emotional suppression or toxic positivity. It was precision about what was actually happening versus the story he was tempted to tell about what was happening. The more accurately he could describe his experience, the more effectively he could respond to it.
Apply this to your declarations of hatred. When you say “I hate cooking,” what would a precise description actually reveal? Maybe: I hate cooking when I’m tired and hungry and nothing sounds appealing. I hate cooking elaborate meals that require planning. I hate cooking for people who don’t appreciate the effort. I hate cooking without the skills to make things taste good. I hate feeling obligated to cook when I’d rather do something else.
These are all different problems with different solutions. Some might be permanent features of your personality. Others might be skills you could develop. Others might be situations you could avoid. But lumping them all together as “I hate cooking” prevents you from distinguishing between what could change and what you actually want to remain as it is.
The lazy language problem extends beyond activities to entire domains of life.
“I’m not a morning person” often means: I haven’t established a consistent sleep schedule, I use substances that interfere with sleep quality, I’ve never actually tried morning routines when well-rested, I prefer evenings and have organized my life around that preference.
Some of these are choices you might want to maintain. Others might be limitations you’ve accepted without examining whether they’re actually limitations or just current patterns.
“I’m bad with money” often means: I never learned basic financial literacy, I use spending to manage emotions, I have conflicting values about money I haven’t resolved, I’m avoiding looking at my actual financial situation because it’s overwhelming.
Again, some of these might be genuine limitations. But declaring yourself “bad with money” makes the problem seem insurmountable and characterological when it might actually be a collection of specific, addressable behaviors and knowledge gaps.
“I’m not creative” often means: I compare my creative attempts to experts and find them lacking, I haven’t practiced creative skills enough to develop competence, I have a narrow definition of what counts as creativity, I’m afraid of making bad things so I make nothing.
The pattern is consistent: lazy language converts complex, specific, potentially changeable situations into simple, global, permanent identities. And once you’ve claimed an identity, defending it becomes more important than examining whether it’s accurate.
Hierocles, a Stoic philosopher who wrote extensively about human development, observed that people become attached to their self-descriptions the way they become attached to possessions. Once you’ve declared “I’m not a math person,” you have psychological investment in that being true. Evidence that contradicts it feels threatening rather than liberating.
You’ll interpret struggles with math as confirmation of your identity rather than as normal parts of learning. You’ll avoid situations that might challenge your self-description. You’ll find comfort in the company of other people who share your identity, reinforcing it through collective agreement.
The identity becomes a prison constructed from language, maintained through social reinforcement, defended through selective attention to confirming evidence.
Breaking out requires something uncomfortable: admitting you might be wrong about yourself. Admitting that your declarations about who you are and what you hate might be outdated, incomplete, or simply inaccurate descriptions of temporary states that have calcified into permanent identities.
What would it mean to replace “I hate X” with more precise descriptions?
“I haven’t enjoyed my past experiences of X because Y and Z.” “I find X difficult when I’m in state A, though I’ve sometimes enjoyed it in state B.” “My current skill level at X makes it frustrating, and I haven’t decided whether developing that skill is worth the effort.” “I associate X with negative memories that I haven’t separated from current experience.”
These descriptions leave room for change, learning, and different experiences under different conditions. They describe your current relationship with something rather than declaring eternal opposition to it.
More importantly, they preserve agency. When you say “I hate running,” you’re declaring yourself powerless over your relationship with running. It’s a fact about you, unchangeable as your eye color. But when you say “I find running difficult at my current fitness level,” you’re describing a temporary state that might change if you choose to address it.
Maybe you won’t choose to address it. Maybe you’ll decide running isn’t worth the effort of developing competence at it. That’s a legitimate choice. But it’s different from declaring essential incompatibility.
The Stoics made a crucial distinction between things that are “up to us” and things that are “not up to us.” Your initial reaction to running is not entirely up to you. But how you describe that reaction, what identity you construct around it, what possibilities you close off through your description, these are completely up to you.
Precise language keeps more options open. It allows you to have had bad experiences with something without becoming someone who hates that thing. It permits you to be currently incompetent at something without declaring yourself permanently incapable of it. It lets your past reactions inform your future choices without determining them.
Most of what you think you hate, you actually hate your experience of under specific conditions at specific times in your development. This distinction might seem trivial, but it’s the difference between a closed door and one that remains ajar.
Consider how many doors you’ve closed through lazy language. How many activities, skills, foods, places, types of people you’ve declared yourself incompatible with based on limited exposure under suboptimal conditions. How many identities you’ve constructed from temporary feelings and then defended as if they were essential truths about who you are.
What would become available if you reopened even a few of those doors?
📝 Today’s Stoic Gameplan
Catch your declarations: Notice when you say “I hate” or “I’m not” or “I can’t” about anything today. Pause and ask: is this actually true, or am I describing a specific experience under specific conditions?
Practice precision: Choose one thing you’ve declared yourself to hate or be bad at. Write a more precise description: what specifically about your past experiences was unpleasant? Under what conditions? With what skill level? What specific factors contributed to your negative experience?
Examine your investment: Notice if you feel resistance to questioning your self-descriptions. Ask: am I more committed to being right about who I am than to discovering whether that description is accurate?
Experiment with language: For one day, replace all global declarations about yourself with specific, conditional descriptions. Instead of “I’m not a morning person,” try “I prefer evenings when I’m on my current sleep schedule.” Notice what shifts.
Language creates the world you inhabit. Lazy language creates a smaller world than necessary, populated by fixed identities that prevent growth and false limitations that close off possibilities.
Precision in how you describe your experience doesn’t just improve communication. It preserves freedom, the freedom to be different tomorrow than you are today, to have new experiences that contradict old conclusions, to remain open to versions of yourself that your current language doesn’t yet have words for.
Stay stoic,
SW
"The identity becomes a prison constructed from language, maintained through social reinforcement, defended through selective attention to confirming evidence."
If there was a score for information density of language, this would be 10/10. Absolutely fantastic.
Apart from the wonderful message of the overall posting, there was so much specific, sage wisdom in each "I hate" paragraph to unpack that I will have to read this a few times over.