#9: Love and Hate

Tears running down her cheeks. I didn’t want that. All I did was telling her what I hated for exactly 2 minutes.

I didn’t even knew her. She was my partner in an exercise at a fooling workshop the year before last.

We are looking into each other’s eyes.

Round 1.

We have 2 minutes each to tell our partner what we loved. 2 minutes is a long time when you stare into a stranger’s pair of eyes. It is also a long time when you think about everything you love. You tend to repeat yourself. You look for variations of the same. Once you have mentioned chocolate, you also bring up milk chocolate, possibly even chocolate with hazelnuts. After 2 minutes, the alarm rings. You switch roles. The other one talks, you just look.

Round 2 is all about hate. 2 minutes each once again. I hate disrespect. I hate hate. I hate violence. I hate inequality. I hate fennel… well, not that much anymore, but anyway. Sorry. I hate to be cold. I hate… hmmm.

Ooops. That is when she starts crying. Was that me? What did I just say? I am really sorry. I need to continue. I feel relieved hearing the alarm go off.

Love and hate.

They are closer than I thought. Sometimes showing up simultaneously,

Is there love without hate? Does hate require an absence of love? They definitely overlap. That was at least my learning from this experience.

How do I express love? What about hate? It helps shouting them out. Acknowledging both feels like the right thing to do.

Love and hate.