So, it took me a while to decide what to write about today. "H" is such an interesting letter. Lot's of beautiful words like Hunger, Haunt, Holy, Humane.
And then there's HATE.
One of the ugliest words I know of. Short. Harsh. Mean in every way. It's not just the sound of the word, it's everything it stands for. It's the degree to which it is employed and misused. The very ease with which it trips from our tongues, without regard to it's real agenda.
Too hate any person, place, thing or action is to loathe it's very existence. To abominate it's reality. To despair of it's presence or influence. We use the word itself too freely, to gratuitously. We say we hate something when what we really mean is we dislike it, feel uncomfortable with it or find it painful. We rarely feel such overwhelming revulsion as to really "hate" anyone or thing.
To HATE is to feel a tendency towards deepseated prejudice and resentment, to be willing to do ANYTHING to ensure it's removal.
Elie Wiesel once said "“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
Anais Nin said "Everything with me is either worship and passion or pity and understanding. I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously."
And Orson Scott Card said it best, without ever using the dreaded "H" word: “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”
Thanks for this amazing post Barbara.
ReplyDeleteThe word is used indiscriminately I agree. Pre-judice means exactly as the word is - a prejudging which implies that the one does not know the other yet 'judges' negatively. Ignorance and arrogance in the extreme.
Eli Wiesel is one of my heroes ... indifference, apathy ...
Hate's companion (that hard, diamond, sapphire like hate) is a strong negative feeling towards another, or towards one's self. Self-hate as in e.g. self-mutilation is a very real psychological 'condition'. Hate towards another may be a feeling that is easier to put upon another rather than face up to it in one's self? A projection?
I guess if one can really ask one's self what the source of those hateful feelings are, it would open up the field, to discern what is actually going on.
Shakespeare, in Antony & Cleopatra: 'In time we hate that which we often fear'.
Buddha said to meet hatred with non-hatred is essential. There is no point in using hatred back to overcome it. Words to that effect.
And to end: Coretta Scott King: "Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hater'.
A very tricky subject indeed. Thank you.
Thanks Susan - The quote from C.S. King has been a guiding thought for much of my life.
DeleteI just saw something similar in Leo Buscaglia's "Live, Love & Learn." We do use hate interchangeably with dislike. I've been reminding myself not to use hate, lest it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Really, I don't hate anything or anyone :)
ReplyDeletewhat a fantastic post, loved it from beginning to end.
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