Oh Hate, How I Love Thee

Perhaps a little known thing about me is that I truly admire New Yorkers' ability to hate so well. All the New Yorkers or New-Yorkers-at-heart I know are so gleefully misanthropic, I die laughing at their caustic witticisms. They love to hate, and they hate with love. It's not blind hatred; it is hatred which comes from seeing through someone so well you can't help but mock their foibles.

I've never been able to hate very well, and sarcasm comes to me only in small doses prompted by lively conversation. When I was a kid, even my enemies at school never gave me much to worry myself over. I certainly never had one of those Potter-Malfoy type of relationships. Hating just took too much energy. Why hate when so much else was going on in the world? I very much subscribed to the notion that hatred only hurt the beholder. Very zen, I was.

But now, maybe I'm getting crotchety in my old age. I'm starting to learn there's two kinds of hate in the world. One is the blind, all-consuming hate that saps you of everything. The kind of "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! DIE, DIE, DIE!" kind of hate (Did anyone catch the Dave Matthews reference?), which I still don't subscribe to very much. The people I could feel this way towards, I just don't think about often. It's wearying, and I have other things to think about that are far more worthwhile. Like belly button lint.

But then, there is another kind of hatred. I don't know if you can even really call it hatred because hate is such an ugly word. It does not at all capture the pure glee there is in hating some people. People I enjoy thinking about because I love enumerating in my head all the reasons they're deserving of scathing, pithy remarks. People I hate so much, it gives me energy. (Dylan Moran is a god for coining that phrase.) As un-Buddhist of me it is to feel this way, and no matter how I try to Catholic-guilt my way out of it, there are one or two people I can't help but hate, liberally and gleefully. With these folk, there is no end to the sharp-tongued witticisms and blistering commentary just begging to be uttered. I try to be discreet and keep my thoughts to myself, but I'm fairly dancing with all the vitriol I'd like to spew.

Lest you think I'm a hate-filled, spiteful being, I'd just like to reiterate that there's only a rare one or two people who bring out my inner New-Yorker. And I swear these people are "special". Maybe I was just more mature as a kid than I am now, but I think I shall lovingly cling to this little slice of hate pie.