Hate

Growing up, one of the refrains from my childhood was “Don’t Hate.” It was a phrase my mom said to me a lot. I never understood what it meant.

I hated onions. I hated mud. I didn’t understand what she meant when she told me “don’t hate,” but she did it often.

When I was 13, there was an incident when she and I got into a heated argument and I stormed down the stairs to my bedroom, saying “I hate you!” and after I calmed down I could hear her crying. I didn’t get why.

I never understood what Mom meant by the words “don’t hate.” She was fine with things like “I don’t like” or “I despise” but for some reason she was never fine with the word hate.

I’m at least starting to understand now. Nothing I “hated” was without reason. I didn’t like how onions tasted. I didn’t like how mud was sticky. But I never hated onions for simply being onions. I never hated mud because it was mud. Nothing I “hated” was a person.

Hate towards others is unreasonable. Hate is a deep loathing for someone that they can do absolutely nothing about. There might be reasons behind a dislike, but if people actually hate, there’s no way to recover from that.

It’s been a grim few days. I’ve been trying to reflect on the situations of violence that have affected our nation – violence toward the black community, the police, or anyone else. The one thing that keeps coming back to me is simply the phrase “don’t hate.” I wish I were still naïve enough to think it applied to onions and mud. Unfortunately, I’m starting to get it now.