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Love and Hate


On one of those nights when I was lying on the bed, waiting for sleep to come and embrace me this thought struck me. "Can we love the one we hate and can we hate the one we love?" I kept on thinking and talking to myself and then slept off. The next morning I remembered some points which I pondered over while some were incoherent. But still if I had to find my answer to this question it would be "No".


How one answers this question (don't know whether this question really needs to be answered...) depends on the experiences of their own life. I feel that both "love" and "hatred" are extreme emotions. Anything less than the extreme would have another name but not these. And if I imagine a scale from minus-infinity to plus-infinity, I would label the minus-infinity point as "Hate/Hatred", Zero point as "Indifference or Absence of any emotion" and plus-infinity point as "Love". Normally our emotions fall somewhere in between this scale and sometimes it touches the extreme points. Now, visualising the same scale, is it possible to jump from one extreme to the other?

I don't think it is possible. The distance and the journey between the two ends is two big to be traversed by a normal individual. You might start disliking the person you once loved, but you will never reach the other infinite end. And if you really feel that you have reached the minus-infinity end, then it means you were never at the plus-infinity end to start with.

Another point I would like to mention is that we can be at the 'Zero' point of the scale only for people we don't know. We sometimes say, "I really don't care about ABC". That's not true. Truth is "I will never own that I do care about ABC". Anybody we know occupies the scale either on the positive or the negative side.

Hmmm...enough. If any of you have thought about this either before or after reading this post please do share your thought. I would like to know other views. May be my approach to answer this question is too simplistic as I might be ignoring many factors.

P.S. Paul Ekman, a psychologist classified emotions as basic and complex. Examples of basic emotions are sadness, happiness and anger. A complex emotion is a mixture of 2 or more of basic emotions. Love and hatred both are complex emotions, so ideally they cannot be put on the same scale. According to this my approach and the answer are flawed. Nevertheless, still we can discuss it.

Comments

I guess indifference is only for a person whom you haven't seen or heard, a perfect stranger! For all others, whether you know or not, you have some scale, I think! Though I heard ppl say they hate someone completely a person whom they "loved whole-heartedly", I don't really know if its complete transition n I don't think thats d case!

You can have this defn:

X is +infty(or -infty) if for any other person Y, you love(or hate) X more!
Anonymous said…
well..
one person has many qualities
person A comprises qualities a1, a2...
its perfectly possible to be madly in love with quality a1 and hate him for quality a2.

what matters at the end of the day is that love for A >>>> -(summation (hate for ai))...that you love him so much that all those other things dont matter much

-swati (dont know you )
Anonymous said…
The beauty of infinity: at all positions you will not be sure whether you have loved or hated in an infinite manner beacuse there is always an infinite amount left to love or hate. Both variables are ill-defined and considering a space of infinity I feel love and hatred can be as close as they are far apart. And if this condition arises , according to me, the best solution will be a circle. Assuming all infinite points in the circle can act as an origin, then you will never ever be able to reach the origin or you will never ever be able to go far from origin. This certainly leads us to a point where we can say that both love and hate are always there and together...or they are one and the same.... Think in this way... in love you see your beloved everywhere and you associate your each and every act of yours with your beloved... Now replace "love" with "HATE" and "YOUR BELOVED" with "YOUR ENEMY". So I beleive its matter of time when we are recepient for love or hatredness... I love you as much as I hate you... and I see no harm in this transformation. But I'm still happy having you because of the feelings which brings me more closer to you...
Anand Jage said…
I am not speaking my view or may be i agree with wat 4 Vedas explain. whole universe is made of love.. actually it would take long to explain but its wonderful how entire cosmos can be explained on as simple as love.. all that it says is love is not emotion its our true existence... emotions are distortion in purity of love...

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