"The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference."
Elie Wiesel
There is no Sumerian word for “love.” They described that emotion as ki-ang — “to measure a place.” There is no word for “hate,” only the phrase: hulu gig — “to make an enemy suffer.” There are only two tenses; the distinction taking place not in time, but in continuities and discontinuities. Either you continue to love, or to hate, or you have ceased to do so entirely. Were these phrases for “love” and “hate” only idioms, or did they have some meaning that was lost when the last Sumerian speaker died four thousand years ago?
11/19/17 - Bombay Beach, California
Love and hate are nearly the same emotion. They sit on a fluid spectrum, effortlessly oscillating between one another with the slightest provocation. They create the same high; a blood-boiling, nauseating compression and release of pure energy that gives life dimension.
Our simplistic love-hate dichotomy is misguided. Love is as selfish as it is selfless. To love is to measure a place; it is an action that carries with it the appraisal of the world which surrounds you. It makes indifference seem mundane, and profane, and absolutely tedious by comparison.
To be indifferent is to relinquish that intoxicating, addictive, and all-around augmented dimension which is otherwise imperceptible. Those who fall in love never fall out. They simply displace it, somewhere else on the volatile love-hate spectrum, until such time as they can project it elsewhere. Hate feels better than nothingness, to renounce the high that we crave the most.
Not fear of loneliness, but fear of meaninglessness.
Neither love nor hate; only the dull pain of indifference.