“Love is blind” – or as the Japanese say, “Bouzu nikukerya kesamade nikui（坊主憎けりゃ袈裟まで憎い）.” – This translates to mean: “If you hate a monk, you will even hate his robe,” or “When you hate someone, you come to hate everything related to the person.”
The first quote means that a person in love can see no faults or imperfection with the person he loves. On the contrary, the second quote means that if someone hates another person, he will even find his dog annoying and also hate his dog.
Let me tell you about a person I once loved. I loved so much that everything he was, everything he did and everything he said was endearing. I even loved his wrinkles! However, as time passed my “rose colored glasses” dimmed and I saw him for who he was – unkind, rarely gentle, and my love melted away. When I started to hate him, everything changed, even his once beautiful smile appeared horribly ugly and I hate to think about it.
This is true as well for work. Once I disliked a colleague, and unsolved problems caused me to eventually feel annoyed at the sound of her footsteps. And, listening to her talk sounded like nails on a chalkboard. However, I know if we were able to find common ground and considered her a good colleague, those minor things would not bothered me at all. I’d probably join office conversations more when she’s around instead of avoiding her.
There is a fine line between love and hate. Let’s dive into the opposite word of love.
If we are going to follow the idea that “there is a fine line between love and hate”, then we might be able to conclude that these two have a similar meaning. The only difference is the directions; while love is focused on what we like about the other person, hate may be attention directed towards what we don’t like about the other person.
Thus, we can say that hate isn’t love’s opposite word.
In my opinion, the opposite word of love is indifference.
Because we don’t care enough or we’re indifferent about their desires. If love is caring, then indifference is the lack of caring. With hate, we are still invested enough to care about the things we don’t like about them.
A wise person once said, “What we hate about a person, might be what we hate about ourselves as well.”
Photo: 【A mirror of yourself】