hate

I’ve never understood this word.  I’ve never understood exactly what it means or how it works, so naturally I looked it up in the dictionary: 

“To dislike extremely or passionately; to feel extreme aversion for or hostility toward; to detest.”

Okay, so what does that mean? I mean, milk feels pretty hostile toward my stomach, but does that mean that milk hates me? I guess that’s a bad example because milk can’t feel.  But in high contact sports like hockey or football, does every player on one team hate everyone on every other team? They have to be hostile toward each other in order to win the game, but do they hate each other? I highly doubt they’ve reached that level of hostility.

So I continued my search for the meaning of “hate” on the trusty urbandictionary.com  and this is what I found:

“A special kind of love given to people who suck.”  Maybe that’s kind of funny, and it’s true in the sense that occasionally I might tell my friend that I hate them because they made a joke about my religion, but generally I’m laughing in that kind of situation.  There’s no hostility or aversion about this.  So this couldn’t be what I’m looking for.

“When you dislike someone so much that if you and the other person were in an empty room with a knife in the middle, one or both of you would be dead.”  That’s extreme hostility. That’s extreme aversion.  This is what I’m looking for.  Hate is a feeling so strong that it could lead someone to make rash decisions forever altering their lives, such as murder, or maybe just a really underhanded comment causing permanent emotional scars, but I like murder better for this example.

Last one: “(noun). Calculated and/or intentional intense dislike; an intensified and elevated level of anger; an unnatural emotion (i.e. hate is something that is derived from natural emotions such as anger or fear); learned dislike or loathing of another person, group, or thing.

Ex. Hate is the root of much of the world's suffering.”           

Now that we have the definition covered, I still have questions.  How can someone feel so strongly about another person that they would hate them.  Yeah, I’ve used the word hate a fair share of times in my brief existence, but I don’t think that I can honestly say that I’ve ever truly hated someone.  I think that, as our last definition states, hate is the root of much of the world’s suffering.  I think that hate should be illegal.  Anyone caught hating another person should be locked up, preferably in a religious establishment that teaches love, until they could never even imagine anything less than loving their neighbor.

Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single person I could truly claim to hate.  Sure, I disliked my soccer coach in high school, but only because I so desperately sought her approval.  Yes, I couldn’t look at Sister Helen in middle school without thinking awful thoughts, but that’s because she insulted my family and my ability to dress myself in less that five seconds of meeting her.  But generally, I’ve never disliked someone until they’ve proven to me that they were incapable of loving me, and even then I reacted poorly by not showering these people with the love that they need.

I understand that people don’t get along.  I understand that if he stole your baseball glove in the sixth grade, you probably won’t be so fond of him.  Or if she called you ugly in high school, you may not jump at the opportunity to love her. But truly, that’s what these people need.  Hateful people need love. Hate requires love. Because if I were in charge of writing the dictionary, I would describe hate as a complete lack of love, and the only cure for this is drowning in love.  And how do you drown someone with love? You rain down on them with kindness and you don’t quit.

James Taylor has a song that says “Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel” but really, Shower the people you hate with love, because a world without hate would be boring, but it would be better for everyone.