One of the most iconic verses of Ye’s hit song “I am A God” has the phrase: ” Soon as they like you, make them unlike you, cuz kissin’ people’s a… is so unlike you…”

It is no wonder that pop culture has a love/hate relationship with the hip hop icon, Ye formerly known as Kanye West. He always had a way of getting everyone on his side with his artistic brilliance only to make an off-the-cuff comment that stirred just as much controversy. However, instead of causing him to lose fans it heightened his mystique.

Now, I am not Ye. I do not have his fame nor his desire for such outlandish controversy but I would like to admit, I do enjoy having room in my life for some dislike. I welcome dislike especially when approval, affection or attention are used as currency for my sense of self worth. If you have to be dishonest with yourself in order to get liked by others or another, you may be headed in a direction you will soon regret.

What is the problem with being liked? At first, not a lot. As humans we are social creatures and it helps to know that you are able to conduct yourself in ways that are conducive to yourself and others. It enables collaboration and consequently survival. However, this sweet feeling can become an objective in itself if we receive too much of it early or not at all. It turns into some kind of social currency. This is where it becomes problematic. Those who can pick up on one’s desire to be wealthy in that currency know how to hone in on one simple truth. Those in pursuit of being liked often turn themselves into social commodities. They learn to subvert their wants and desires into the pursuit of providing the wants and desires of others. When one gets really good at this it is a form of mastery as it means we wield the power of pleasure in our grasp. But we risk missing something huge about being liked enormously. Again, famous people deal with this in the most consequential ways but it is certainly not exclusive them.

When most people like you or claim to like you there is an expectation of wish fulfillment that you the liked person, object of affection, famous person, impressario have to contend with. Sad part is you are not often privy to this. It is akin to the pretty model or actress and her stalker lurking outside her apartment as she returns home. They often want something from you that you never agreed to, mostly, at an inconvenient time. When you object the threat is to withdraw approval, affection or attention or worst your right to life.

For a lot of us, due to the value we hold in our lives for our social networks or for celebrities and salesmen; the value of their fans and customers, this can be a high price to pay – or so it seems. Sometimes it is the person just starting out in a new job or the employee desperately seeking a promotion. It is not uncommon for this to make one endure small forms of disrespect or what today’s workers refer to as micro-aggressions. But eventually, this becomes to high a price to maintain. Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars on the night he won for Best Actor is a clear example of how superlikeability turned into supervillainy in an instant. Like clockwork most people turned on him for ruining the greatest night in Hollywood. We saw his behavior as reprehensible and several of us wanted him to endure the wrath of the public that had given him so much adoration over the last three decades. However, this was a clear example of how the cost of likeability was more than his spirit could afford. This was probably the most liberating night of his life. Most of us had not considered the toll years’ long memes about his marriage, sexuality and overall manhood were taking on him and his family so he could remain the No. 1 Hollywood star. The most liked actor in the world.

When you seek to be liked, the price you pay is your soul. Thus if you want to retain your soul’s integrity you have to be familiar with being hated or at least disliked. You have to be willing to endure insults, smear campaigns and gossip. How much of it hurts depends on how much you seek to be liked.

By Why be Hated? You do not have to actively seek to be hated. For that is the exact opposite and is still some sort of Faustian compromise which seeks its own reward in direct expense of the soul. But if maintaining integrity leads to being hated there is a strong chance you are in the wrong environment or seeking validation from the wrong people. The fear of being hated is often much stronger than the desire to be liked and thus we usher in our suffering at the hands of others when we do not confront this fear and examine whether this “hatred” we fear is true at the expense of our livelihood.

The uncomfortable truth may be that when we confront the situations in which we desperately seek to be liked we may realize that the people whose scorn we fear never had that power over us to begin with and the pursuit itself was self-inflicted.

by Julian Michael Yong.