Reflections on Love and Hate

In the last few weeks I have seen the movie Milk and finished the book A Long Time Gone.

Milk is the story of gay activist Harvey Milk in the sixties and seventies, and it shows the emotional response to gay activism and success. Laws would be passed to allow gay people equal rights and anti-gay groups would move into the area to get those laws repealed. The anti-gay movement seemed—and still seems to me—filled with hate.

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah describes his life during the civil war in Sierra Leone. This includes the period after he loses his parents (at age twelve) and wanders the country at night with other children, looking for his family and avoiding danger. He also describes his time as a child soldier, a time during which he was indoctrinated in hate and committed terrible acts of violence. He was rescued by UNICEF and had to be “rehabilitated” and de-programmed.

Both of these works have me thinking of love and hate. It’s interesting that soon after these two stories, my yoga teacher, Jamie, read these passages from Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Hatred paralyses life; love releases it.Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.""I have decided to stick with love.Hate is too great a burden to bear."

I have been trying to live with these words and see how they shed light on both hate and love.