Spring Break
Falling In Hate
Emma's Dilemma
Issue date: 11/5/09
Everybody always talks about falling in love. We have movies about it, books about it, greeting card industries about it, holidays, candles, expressions and candy (both in the sense of the delectable treats and Mandy Moore).
But I'm not here to talk about love today. I'm here to give voice to its neglected, industry-less brother: hate. People usually try to shove the "H" word under the rug because everyone knows that hate is bad.
As young children we're taught to curb our aggressive feelings and channel them into art projects and pillow punching. As adults, if we fail to keep up a façade of social grace we are shunned.
Statistics even show that inmates look down on other inmates whom they view as being abnormally angry.
If only we could have a world without hate, where we could continuously tolerate one another and everything was always sunshine and rainbows and puppies…
This is what we are taught is the makings of a good, productive society. Love = good, hate = bad.
Unfortunately, there is just one fly in the ointment. Hate is a naturally occurring phenomenon, just like love.
We all feel hate at one point or another. And unlike love, an emotion that everyone has been groomed to be receptive to since an early age (making it more bearable when it happens unexpectedly), we are absurdly ill-equipped to deal with our hatred.
It's ironic because I suspect the reason hatred got a bad rap in the first place is that people didn't know how to curb their reactions to it, not because it's inherently bad.
Everyone knows that hate leads to awkwardness, unpleasantness and violence. However, hate isn't always a bad thing. After all, righteous indignation is a form of hatred, right?
And, by the same token, love can have all the same side effects as hate, only they're more acceptable because they are "in the name of love."
If someone you have no feelings for loves you, it can cause just as much discomfort as hate, if not more because when someone has positive feelings for you, you automatically feel a little more responsible for them.
But I'm not here to talk about love today. I'm here to give voice to its neglected, industry-less brother: hate. People usually try to shove the "H" word under the rug because everyone knows that hate is bad.
As young children we're taught to curb our aggressive feelings and channel them into art projects and pillow punching. As adults, if we fail to keep up a façade of social grace we are shunned.
Statistics even show that inmates look down on other inmates whom they view as being abnormally angry.
If only we could have a world without hate, where we could continuously tolerate one another and everything was always sunshine and rainbows and puppies…
This is what we are taught is the makings of a good, productive society. Love = good, hate = bad.
Unfortunately, there is just one fly in the ointment. Hate is a naturally occurring phenomenon, just like love.
We all feel hate at one point or another. And unlike love, an emotion that everyone has been groomed to be receptive to since an early age (making it more bearable when it happens unexpectedly), we are absurdly ill-equipped to deal with our hatred.
It's ironic because I suspect the reason hatred got a bad rap in the first place is that people didn't know how to curb their reactions to it, not because it's inherently bad.
Everyone knows that hate leads to awkwardness, unpleasantness and violence. However, hate isn't always a bad thing. After all, righteous indignation is a form of hatred, right?
And, by the same token, love can have all the same side effects as hate, only they're more acceptable because they are "in the name of love."
If someone you have no feelings for loves you, it can cause just as much discomfort as hate, if not more because when someone has positive feelings for you, you automatically feel a little more responsible for them.
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Las Vegas movers | Long distance moving Las Vegas
posted 11/10/09 @ 3:41 PM EST
Quote:
"And, by the same token, love can have all the same side effects as hate, only they're more acceptable because they are "in the name of love. (Continued…)
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