Both 'hate' and 'love', are words I think are widely overused. Not in the same way as "YOLO", though. If you haven't heard of YOLO, count yourself lucky. I won't explain it here. I might make a post about it at a later date, because it is something I think I would enjoy ranting about. But if you have, you might understand what I mean.
'Hate' and 'love' however, are words that people throw out there as if they didn't have any real, or deep, meaning behind them.
"I hate Mondays", "I hate bananas", and "I hate being bored". No, that feeling isn't hatred. It it is dislike. You dislike Mondays, you dislike bananas and you dislike being bored. What bugs me about it the most is one particular case where people "hate", the 'just don't want to' hate.
This comes up with "I hate bananas", when the person has never tried one in their life. I, myself, am guilty of this when I was younger with peanut butter. I used to say that I hated it. But I didn't hate it. I could eat it, I liked certain things that had it, and it wasn't like it made me sick or anything. I just didn't like it. But, when someone offered me a peanut butter sandwich, I would still say, "Ew, no. I hate peanut butter." I don't anymore, and haven't for a while.
This also comes up with "I hate being bored". Which really means, "I don't want to be bored." If they truly hated being bored, they would do something about it instead of just complaining about being bored.
Anyway, this all comes up because I saw talk on Facebook about how much this girl hates someone, even calls them her enemy.
I didn't know that people had enemies outside of works of fiction. But, she went on and on about this girl, anyway. And a lot of what she accused her of doing, were things that she did herself.
For the sake of clarity, let us call the girl who posted Beth, and the person she was ranting about Mary.
Beth called Mary fake, because Mary used to like Twilight and now Mary is acting like Twilight sucks because everyone else is. I happen to know for a fact that Beth used to have a giant Twilight poster in her room, not ironically and not to use as a dart board. Beth called Mary a s***, because she said Mary lost her virginity really young and has had sex with multiple guys. Well, I got a text from Beth the day after she lost her virginity when she was 13. And I happen to know, she has slept with people since then.
This went on for awhile, and because Facebook is the place for drama and is often times like a live soap opera, I kept reading. Then I put on my "I've taken an Intro to Psychology class" hat and started thinking about why she was so upset with this girl.
At first, I was really worried. I was thinking, what if she hates this girl for having all the same negative qualities as herself, because really she hates herself? Because she was my friend, I started looking through her posts to see if they had become more depressing lately and I sent her a message to see if she was alright.
But, while going through her posts, I noticed that Mary and Beth had gotten into a fight before. They had called each other names, enemies, said they hated each other, and then made up. In fact, they had done it several times before.
So, after a few days, I signed in to Facebook and Beth updated her status as going to Jamba Juice, with Mary.
Which proves three things nothing on Facebook should be taken seriously, enemies belong in fiction, and maybe we need to rethink what words we use. Hate seems like a really strong word to use for a friend you are just fighting with. And things worked out as well as they could for Mary and Beth, but what if Mary had taken hate to mean something more than just dislike (or as the case was, unhappiness or current disapproval), what if she took it to mean real hatred? What if she thought they really were enemies?
It could have ruined their friendship.
Though, it doesn't seem all that strong anyway. But, my point is, that we overuse the word hate. It rolls of the tongue better than dislike but, at least for me, it really means something much darker and deeper. And it should not be used as synonymous.
What do you think?
Is there anything that you hate? How about things you "hate"?
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