"There's a fine line between love and hate"...

I was talking to Mark this evening about emotions.

My metamour is a fascinating man. In some ways, he and I are very similar; in others, we could not be more different. We both have very large hearts, and we're both quite spiritual, he moreso than I. We're both deep thinkers with a gift for simplifying our deep thoughts.

One way in which we differ enormously is our attitude towards authority. I come from a background in which questioning authority was not encouraged, and I've come to learn, through such oft-cited role models as George Carlin, Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson, that authority must be questioned if evolution is to occur.

Mark's instinctive attitude towards authority could best be termed as intensely distrustful, and he will not just question it but outright defy it if he sees a higher purpose in doing so.

Thanks to a very submissive nature on my part, I question the way I do virtually everything: gently. I have a knack for making waves without rocking boats.

Don't get me wrong: Mark is a very gentle man. But within him is the soul of a warrior, and extremely strong reactions, particularly to injustice, are never far from his surface. I think of him as a modern day incarnation of a Shaolin monk. He has risen to overcome his anger...but has always kept it in reserve, to tap for a higher purpose. I admire that. Often I wish I were like that myself.

I'm not, as a matter of course. As I wrote a couple of posts ago, I will fight viciously in defence of those I love, but it goes against my nature and it takes a toll, both emotional and physical, on me to do it.

We were talking about love, and Mark said something I have heard many times before: "there's a fine, fine line between love and hate".

I've heard it many times before. I've never agreed with it. My disagreement has always been instant and total and unshakeable. Despite my being wary whenever my mind can't be moved--I start checking for hidden blind spots in that case--it still can't be moved on this. Saying "there's a fine line between love and hate" is like saying there's a fine line between hot and cold, or black and white. No, even more absolute: if you hate someone even the tiniest bit, to me that means you not only don't love them, but can't.

I will hastily suggest it is more than possible to hate something that someone has done, or the way in which they have done it, without hating the person themselves.

 I will then, even more hastily, suggest that it is not kosher to hate an expression of one's identity while claiming to still love the person. Usually, this "love the sinner, hate the 'sin'" dictum is applied to homosexuality. "I love gay people, but I hate when they do gay things" is kind of like saying "I love women, but I hate when they menstruate/lactate/give birth": deeply offensive...and patently ridiculous.

Mark gave it the ol' college try, he did, trying to get me to see how love and hate are not at all far removed from each other. "Love," he said, "is an obsessive emotion. So is hate."

"I will grant you that," I said, thinking of how when you first fall in love, you tend to go a little bonkers.

"So," he continued, "bang! You're in love. You do everything together, you learn each other inside and out...and down the road, maybe you grow apart."

Still with you, I thought.

"Love can flip very easily into hate, then."

stop

"No", I said. "You grow apart means you grow apart. Where does the hate come from?"

And he shrugged his shoulders as if to say it just does and I shook my head to say it just doesn't and he called me a highly evolved and extremely mature being.

Oh, Mark, you have worlds left to learn about your metamour. Mature? Moi? Surely you jest.

"No," he insisted. "Your love is not passionate --"

"--oh, yes, it is," I interjected.

"Okay, well, yes, of course that's there, but in your case it's tempered by, and here I'm going to sound a bit daft, but I believe this to be true... something divine in you."

People keep SAYING this about me. It's a good thing I see divinity in everyone, or I'd have a pretty fuckin' big head by now.

I do, you know. See divinity in everyone. I stated eight years ago that we are all special, but no one is more special than anyone else, and if anything that conviction has hardened over time. Heinlein said it before me: "thou art God." And Jesus of Nazareth said it long before him: "Whatsoever you do to the least of these My children, you do to me". (That's one place where it pays to take your Bible literally...)

Another reason it is suggested that love and hate are close cousins is because both involve a great deal of care. If you hate someone, you care about them a lot, just in a negative way. Within this paradigm, the opposite of love is indifference.

That does make sense to me, and it very much true for me: if I love you, I love you without reservation and eternally. I may be capable of maintaining hatred. To be honest, I've never bothered to find out. It takes a lot of energy to even express hatred, and if I'm going to expend that much energy, I'd prefer it to have a positive outcome.

Further: yes, I'm indifferent towards people to whom I don't have a personal connection. That indifference can strike people as cold. Again, it's a matter of conservation of energy, or at least I have always framed it that way: there are a limited number of people I can genuinely care for. That number is regrettably small.

I'm working on this, and I have found my circle of caring has expanded by leaps and bounds over the past year. I have deepened existing connections, created new, highly important ones (including one of the deepest connections I've ever forged), and even I am sometimes surprised by my capacity for love. I'm starting to truly believe that Heinlein was right when he said

“The more you love, the more you can love--and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.”

Even though love and hate have intensity in common, I'm still not convinced that they are close kin, emotionally. Rather, I see love, hate and indifference as vertices A, B and C on an equilateral triangle. (Dear god, he's slipping into math.)  I think that both hate and indifference could be labelled as opposites to love.

And once I have experienced love for someone, I can't even manage indifference, much less hatred. The best I can do is take that love and put it behind a locked door...to which I let it be known they still possess the key.

Don't get me wrong... sometimes, in the interest of love, it is necessary to walk away from someone, either because your presence no longer serves their highest good, or because their presence no longer serves yours. This is called 'divergence', and I can't for the life of me understand why so many people lapse into hatred at this point. It's life. It happens. Why keep someone in a relationship that no longer serves their highest good?  Love is freedom, not possessiveness.

This last strikes many as a cavalier attitude. He's just going to up and leave her when he decides she's no longer of value to him.

NO.

No, no, a thousand times no. I don't leave people's lives unless it's made crystal clear to me that this is what is desired. The relationship may well change form, but such a change would be mutually agreed upon, not unilateral at all. That is what is meant by "the people in the relationship are more important than the relationship".

I believe that love and hate, just like love and indifference, are mutually exclusive states. Ideally, we should come at everything and everyone from a perspective of love; there aren't all that many people who have managed to live up to that ideal in the whole of human history. I'm certainly not one of them, not by a long shot. But I'm trying. And I get a little better at it with every passing year.