Hate: Reaping the Fruit

Hate is as all-absorbing as love, as irrational, and in its own way as satisfying.  As lovers thrive on the presence of the beloved, haters revel in encounters with the one they hate.  They confirm him in all his darkest suspicions.  They add fuel to all his most burning animosities.  The anticipation of them makes the hating heart pound.  The memory of them can be as sweet as young love.

The major difference between hating and loving is perhaps that whereas to love somebody is to be fulfilled and enriched by the experience, to have somebody is to be diminished and drained by it.  Lovers, by losing themselves in their loving find themselves, become themselves.  Haters simply lose themselves.  Theirs is the ultimately consuming passion.

Frederick Buechner,

Listening to Your Life, p. 123