Growing up I always heard “hate is such a strong word” and it was always sort of frowned upon to say that I hate something.  It occurred to me though, that humans are made to function in hate the same as they function with love and that’s saying something.  The reality is, most hatred doesn’t hurt anyone and its when it starts to that there’s a problem. For instance, I hate asparagus but being intolerant of asparagus is more amusing than say, hating someone who is black or Jewish or whatever.

Besides the fact that instead of killing something, the asparagus gets to live with me avoiding it rather than showing hate.

A friend and I discussed how some people feel love/hate to extremes. I really don’t. I suppose that I’m a strange brand of human that neither of these comes to be quickly or with any overwhelming feeling. I don’t think I have the ability to hate strongly, or hate a person for that matter. Yet I end up with an ability to infinitely show compassion and care for others. I’m not sure which is better, both have merits.

Really what I’m getting at (and after all the random background nonsense) is that I think hatred stems from bitterness.¹ Bitterness for something someone did or just anything for that matter. I don’t really think that love is the answer to solving hate. Yes they are opposites, but opposites don’t always fix their counterpart, they may just simply neutralize it which isn’t the same. Both are still there, they are just masked.  My theory here is that what truly fixes the hatred is compassion. With compassion people can try to remove the bitterness rather than just hide it.  I used to do a lot of work with homeless people and a lot of the time these people were very bitter and full of anger and hate. I remember handing them sandwiches and ice tea and sitting and talking, it was amazing the difference that it made.

Not that everything isn’t connected. To truly love you have to have compassion I think. At least, in my experience.  I’m rarely ever talking romantic love. You don’t need to be in an intimate relationship with someone to love them, you don’t even need to know them to love them. Part of me loves the humanness that comes from loving everyone, but part of me is sad that its becoming less of a norm.  People would rather be selfish and use love so sparingly. Maybe the reason I can’t express any sort of romantic love is because of the fact that I love people so much I can’t differentiate all that well.  Or maybe I just don’t want to give all my love to one person.  I have yet to figure this out.

1. The real kind of hatred, not my anti-asparagus life↩