The one thing I hate

Photo credit: http://steelturman.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/kill_tv.JPG

I hate the idea that people hate something. Am I conflicting myself here? Well, I take the blame and use this word for one last time.

The word hate implies utter rejection, irreconcilable aversion, a no turning back footing, a lost chance for understanding or forgiving. It has no reason, no tangible physical appearance, and no constructive energy that would forward any cause. Hate is the springboard for distruction, atrocities, terror, and the historical debris from the down of mankind of the "eye for an eye" mentality. Hate exists only in our head but boy, is it well rooted there…!

As I see it, hate exists in two forms: sensorial and intellectual.

On the subject of “sensorial hate” let me bring up an early childhood memory. In my young age, I used to “hate” carrots in the soup. One day, having been fed up with all the unconsumed carrots piling up on the side of my soup bowl, my daycare teacher made me eat every bit of them. Being obedient as I was, I struggled really hard to swallow the apparently disgusting, overcooked, mushy and tasteless substance. Hard as I tried, within minutes it came back with a violent gush. It covered the table, my fellow tablemates and the teacher’s sparkling white coat with the half digested soup particles that never fulfilled their original purpose of nourishing my rapidly growing body. Did I say I hated cooked carrots?

Well, time has passed, and I changed. One day I noticed that I was not pushing the cooked carrots on the side of the plate any more. No, not because I found it childish, but because I enjoyed eating it. So, what happened to my hatred for cooked carrots!?

I think we can dislike something with different intensity but probably should never feel that we hate it. One day, we might just need to “eat our words”.

As to the “intellectual” hate, I recall my distaste for the Eastern European political system before the changes took place in the 80s. One might say that I hated it there in those days. I was struggling in 1 room sublets, moonlighting just to be able to pay for a few dinners with my girlfriends. I was bickering that I could not see the rest of the world, as I was dying to, because the country had no hard currency to spare for tourism. The organization of society was overly controlling, restrictive, and did not give a real chance to the people to choose their ways. The state socialism heavily manipulated the economy with little attention to basic rules. The leaders, after all, had to look good at the end of every 5-year planning cycle. I think hate is what I may have felt for being cheated, shortchanged and exploited.

Then, I found myself on the polar opposite of that political and economical system. I arrived to the USA. Without getting into too much detail, slowly I started to appreciate some of the good things the socialist system had to offer back in Eastern Europe. Beside the obvious social benefits, people seemed to care about each other. A common goal was almost always on equal footing with individual interests and this provided a certain sense of community. Greed was denounced back there, not considered a “virtue” and a necessity for economical growth as declared, among others, by Rick Newman in his assay “The need for greed”.

So, there went my hate, or perhaps the closest I have ever gotten to it, against an old, discredited political scheme. It mellowed down to a mere dislike. I became a critical viewer of a large-scale social experiment that nonetheless, produced less victims then the settlement of the Americas or the system change in Iraq. Unlike hate, this newly found emotion did not prevent me from noticing and acknowledging certain likeable and desirable features of that defunct piece of modern history.

So, just like with the “sensorial hate”, we also have to be careful with the “intellectual hate”. A person, a view, an action may appear dark or devilish but we always need to leave some wiggle room for the benefit of doubt, room for ourselves to revisit or even reevaluate the subject of our dislike. And hate prevents us from doing that.