Which is easier? Hating someone without reason or loving someone without reason?
We are chastised and mocked for saying that we are in love before we hit 20 but have accepted that hating people of opposite class, race, ethnicity, or sex is perfectly acceptable by middle school. We don't think twice about cursing at the car who cuts us off on the interstate with our children in the car, but we are quick to judge the couple who got married right after high school. Everyone believes that it's okay for someone to hate someone else but the second someone wants to love who they want, we have rallies to keep it from happening, we make laws preventing it. When there is one difference between love and hate. Webster's defines love as "a quality or feeling of strong or constant affection for and dedication to another" and hate as "intense hostility and aversion". They are both intense emotions, but there is a time table for one and not the other.
Now asking for everyone to love each other would be absolutely crazy. What we should ask from each other is tolerance. That should be what we hold each other accountable for. Where we stop our friends from talking down on someone, where we catch ourselves from yelling at the car in front of us going 35 in a 55. We need a world without "tough love" which, let's be honest, is how we get out of feeling bad for bringing someone down a few pegs. We need a world where, simply, we mind our own business. We don't worry about how everyone else is failing but how they are succeeding.
We live in a world where people die daily from hate. We live in a world where all we see on the news is a rotation, murder, robbery, murder, rape, murder, and we are unphased by it. "Hey, did you see where there was another shooting on main street today?" has become dinner talk. Yet, we still teach our children simply that "hate is a bad word" instead of, "hate is not justified". We are taught the "Golden Rule" from an early age. "If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say it" but when does this rule change to "If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say it to their face" or "If you don't have anything nice to say it's okay if they aren't your race"? We have to hold ourselves accountable for how the adults of tomorrow treat each other. We must take the time to learn to love people who are not us.
