(C) Copywritten 2003
����������� Siblings have their rivalry, in which they squabble and bicker over trivial and meaningless ideas and possessions. Couples, who entered into both a legal and moral agreement also aggressively pick away at each other as the days and years roll by. Even children are prone to throw fits and curse the name of whoever won't give them a cookie or tells them it's wrong to roll in the mud. However, would you consider all of these ideas and all those like them the definition of hatred?
����������� For the latter half of my twenty years, I have often wondered about the nature of hatred. Before I go any further with this idea though, I must assure you that I am every bit as sound and knowledgeable about the world around us and the worlds we forge for ourselves as you are. I'm no philosophical scholar, but I do consider myself a bit more of a thinker than say, a rock or maybe even an insect.
����������� So what is hatred? Well, most people would say that it is an emotion that we express towards anything that makes us uncomfortable, frustrated, or in some way changes our lives in any way, large or small, which we don't agree with or refuse to agree with.
����������� Now I am inclined to concur with most people, since by that definition, I have myself very much experienced hatred many times, as I am sure you and everyone you know has. I mean when was the last time you ever knew someone who never got mad when someone cut them off in traffic or when they were spoken to with disrespect? While I may be contradicting myself, I would like to say that I did know such a person, for a short time. His name was William, but to me he was known as Grandpa Bill.
����������� I didn't know Grandpa Bill that well until he was what most people call a senior. He was a phenomenon to me. I never in the fourteen or fifteen years I knew him saw him angry. He had no hatred that I was aware of. Now is this to say he was an exception to the laws of human emotion, and was incapable of forming anything from a grudge to a sincere abhorrence towards anything? I doubt it, but for those of you who believe in magic, and I like to think I do, perhaps he was.
����������� Sadly, we can't all be Grandpa Bills.� We get mad. We scream at each other, we throw things across rooms, and we curse and use profanity. Some of us really lose control and start hitting each other, or break things in our fits of blind rage. Hatred can even drag some of us into the league of murders, adulterers, and psychos. It's a powerful emotion, isn't it?
����������� None of us can escape hatred. It is ever much a part of who we are as happiness, depression, confusion, and fear. It is this indisputable fact that has birthed in me, I believe, the blackest, most powerful hatred I have ever known to exist either in fact or fiction: I have hatred for the hatred you and I both have.
����������� It's a perplexing idea, and I am not sure I quite understand it myself. I would like to take this chance to maybe give you some idea of what I am trying to express here. See if anything sounds familiar.
����������� Have you ever been bullied? In grade four do you remember the really big kid or pair or group of kids that were never happy and called everyone else stupid? Every school had them. If not, well, mine sure did. Regardless, whether it was by a full time bully on the schoolyard, or by your parents, or by a boss you once had at a summer job, we have all had that sense that we are being victimized by those more powerful or more confident then us.
����������� This, to me, was a tragedy. I often wondered why this would happen. Why on earth were these three kids making fun of me and throwing stones in my direction? I didn't know them, nor do I ever remember doing anything to provoke such an attack. I sought answers at every turn. The teachers, councilors, principles and other grown ups would suggest that they are just out to make themselves feel more dominate by subduing those around them. While this did, for the most part, offer some insight into the mental wiring of bullies, the question was still why? Why do such a thing? Surly there were more positive ways to gain trust, friendship and respect from someone then tipping their lunch tray. There must be another alternative to getting a divorce with your supposed loved one in order to resolve a dispute? Can an international conflict of ideas really only be settled by war?
����������� I could never be a bully. I could never face a bully either. Both options boiled down to conflict, which was another inevitable aftermath of hatred. I could never understand conflict, just as I cannot understand hatred. Growing up, I avoided conflict wherever it manifested itself. Rather than go in the front doors at school and risk coming across James the bully, I'd take an extra ten minutes and an extra two hundred steps and go around to the side doors. If I was getting called names, rather than fire some taunts back in retaliation which I never had, I would turn and run. I didn't understand the nature of conflict, just as I can't understand the nature of hatred. Thus, I now hate both.
����������� To take an extreme left turn, I would like to present a possible alternative. I have heard that as part of our unpreventable habits as a result of our emotions, we always fear that which we don't understand. Fear leads to anger, and anger back to hatred, as once said by a very wise source. So you see, all of these emotions: fear, anger, confusion, and hatred, they all connect. Could it be that any one of these could act as the conductor for the rest to follow? I believe so.
����������� I change the channel when a report on some distant war comes on. I sit quietly, not making a sound as a friend of mine argues with his younger sister about some meaningless little thing. I listen contently and offer what insight and support I can when someone is expressing how frustrated they are at the events surrounding them. I run from challenges I feel are too overbearing and yield no practical results. I feel terrified at the thought of someone feeling displeased, annoyed, or disappointed in something I have done or said. I am angered when anger is handed to me without justification, and paralyzed when that same anger is justifiable.
����������� I know there is no way to eliminate hatred. While the idea of a world without it sounds flawless and in all essence like it would be a better place to exist in, I suppose that there is no possible way such a fantasy could be real, can it?
����������� Now I like to believe that I don't get angry unless there is a reason to, but once again that's probably a falsity. The next time you are angry, ask yourself the reason for it. The answer could come in an instant, or there may not be an answer at all. There doesn't really need to be one, if you think about out. People feel happy or depressed or paranoid without reasons all the time right? Anger should be no different, since it is just as natural to us as any other emotion.
����������� Perhaps in the distant future, scientists will be able to pinpoint, detail, identify, and explain exactly how hatred in the human mind works. I would love to be around to witness that--to be able to have the knowledge of why I want to flip that jogger off for bumping into me on the sidewalk and making me drop my ice cream cone, or why I can't stand knowing that Brad in the cubicle next to me hopes I get fired tomorrow so he doesn't have to put up with being next to me.
����������� I would love to see this mystery of malice--this hatred of hatred of mine--untied and placed out plain and simple in front of me. Wouldn't you?
