LOVE
HATE
These are really strong words. I am sure there are hundreds more but these are the ones that irritate me the most.
Ok maybe I should explain myself a little.
This was one of my Facebook statuses this week:
"I HATE wallpaper. Sorry, I rarely manage to have such an emotive reaction to anything but that stuff I could live my whole life with out having to strip one more wall!!!!!!!!"
I know people that 'hate' everything. If the slightest thing irritates them, if they discover a dislike for something they immediately 'hate' it. My eldest 'Hates' mushrooms yes I use a capital letter here in an attempt to convey the vehemence with which the word is uttered!
Now I don't know about you but I think the words I mentioned above are very strong and emotive. They convey such a depth of feeling and importance that I feel they should be reserved for things that really matter. I don't think I could muster that level of emotion for a food stuff that I happen not to like eating.
However, to be slightly hypocritical, I can and do often state that 'I Love....' chocolate usually! How is it I can bring myself to love something that only causes me problems? How can I bring my self to love a few random words strung together in a blog post written by someone I have never met? I don't know but this depth of positive emotion comes easily to me, it makes me lighter, it helps me to spring through life. Hate makes me feel heavy, like I am trying to wade through mud. But then I guess that my status was appropriate; stripping wallpaper is like wadding through mud, the thought of having to do it makes me heavy. As I stripped, I cursed whoever invented the infernal wall covering, I got frustrated with the tiny little scraps that refused to surrender their grip on the wall and then I cursed the pieces I had managed to remove for sticking to me!
Then, oh no! I carried on, status two:
"I hate home improvements!! Wow the list of things I hate just keeps growing! It like eating Pringles, once you start you just can't stop :-/"
Oh, I am becoming the thing that irritates me; I mean seriously do I 'hate' home improvements or do I just dislike the time and mess involved in making them happen?? Once the negative emotion takes hold of you it just drags you down and keeps you there. Pretty soon everything starts to get tainted. I think I will keep loving as much as I can just to keep the darkness away, to quote Michael Jackson: 'I'm a lover not a fighter'
But I still hate wallpaper!
Considering the topic of this post, I hesitate to say this, but I LOVED seeing that Michael Jackson album cover as scrolled down. :)
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean, though, I think both words get used too much--almost to the point of being watered down as expressions of deep emotions. I say "hate" probably a ridiculously amount, but I'm grateful that I have much more reason to use the "l" word.
Use love in relation to Michael Jackson all you like, I too love him and all the memories of my childhood that come with him.
DeleteI know what you mean about the watering down, the other half used to tell me he loved me so much that I worried it meant nothing (this is 16 years ago!) I soon learnt otherwise.
I think I very often find myself to be the thing that irritates me, but at least recognizing that makes me try harder to do exactly what you're doing and thinking my way through it. This was key for me: "I mean seriously do I 'hate' home improvements or do I just dislike the time and mess involved in making them happen??" So true. I think I can apply this to so many things in my life. Thank you for this post, it's very thoughtful.
ReplyDeleteWho knew wallpaper could be so insightfull ;-)
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