{"id":2275,"date":"2014-11-09T19:31:27","date_gmt":"2014-11-09T18:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=2275"},"modified":"2020-02-03T15:48:34","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T14:48:34","slug":"my-war-on-the-h-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=2275","title":{"rendered":"My War on the H Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hate\"<\/a>It was during class that a student said it: \u201cProfessor, you hate a lot of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was stunned, but even as I mentally organized my defense I knew why he\u2019d said it. At least three times that lesson I had claimed to hate things: mornings, lateness, and mobile phones.<\/p>\n

I stowed my defense.<\/p>\n

I have never considered myself a hater, and that\u2019s because I\u2019m not a hater. I don’t genuinely hate a lot of things. I have never hated anyone based on their religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. And while there are political and social ideologies I disagree with, I don\u2019t hate anyone simply because they think differently from me.<\/p>\n

I might roll my eyes at the Facebook posts of friends who are politically conservative, pro-gun, or vegan, but I don\u2019t hate them. I don\u2019t like guns, but I have many wonderful friends who do. And vegans, well, I guess the less meat they eat, they more there is for me.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t even hate spiders.<\/p>\n

Still, this seed sprouted throughout the day and so I came up with an experiment. I decided to keep tally of my \u201chates\u201d for a week. Anytime the word \u201chate\u201d came out of my mouth I would note it down. Even if I managed to stifle it, I\u2019d note it down.<\/p>\n

I quit after two days.<\/p>\n

In the first two days of this experiment I had said \u201chate\u201d 22 times. And I wasn\u2019t using “hate” to convey my disdain towards major crimes against humanity such as child abuse, racism, or the Dallas Cowboys. No, I hated traffic, late students, my neighbor\u2019s dog, the hill I live atop, Sunday afternoons, Monday mornings, Saturdays during which I have to work, itchy skin, cleaning my sink, the dative case in Czech, waiters, warm beer, and nasal hair.<\/p>\n

In other words: my life. I hated my life. I hated everything in my life that didn\u2019t make me absolutely ecstatic. From this logic, I supposed I would enjoy my life if it only consisted of Friday nights, hotdogs, ginger snaps, and oral sex.<\/p>\n

This was unacceptable, something had to be done. And so I went to war with the H word by eliminating it from my lexicon. The only rule was that I could not say the word \u201chate.”<\/p>\n

If this were a Christmas movie this is where the epiphany would enter. The main character would realize that he loved everything and rescue a sled of toys from obliteration high above Whoville. If this were a movie he would suddenly know that sound of one hand clapping or find a renewed zest and love for all things, good and bad.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t offer that, this is real life after all. It turns out that \u201chate\u201d was my go-to verb, my kneejerk reaction to anything which displeased me. Therefore, the last week has been a tongue chomping, teeth-gritting affair. But though I grumble and grit, I haven\u2019t used the word \u201chate\u201d in a week.<\/p>\n

So in a small way, I guess I’m slowly winning my war on the H word. And I bet it hates that.<\/p>\n

Any words you’d like to eliminate from your lexicon?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was during class that a student said it: \u201cProfessor, you hate a lot of stuff.\u201d I was stunned, but even as I mentally organized my defense I knew why he\u2019d said it. At least three times that lesson I had claimed to hate things: mornings, lateness, and mobile phones. I stowed my defense. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-AH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2275"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4898,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275\/revisions\/4898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}