Words.
They can make you smile, they can make you laugh.
They can break a heart, and they can mend it.
They can save a life, and they can take it away.
Growing up we’re told never to use certain words, most of which fall under the profanity category.
One word, however, stands alone and holds more meaning and more negative emotion than any other word in the English language or any language for that matter.
That word is hate.
Many of us don’t use the word on a regular basis, but we practise the emotion through our actions and through combinations of other words. We see it every day in the news, on playgrounds and in our schools. People experience it at home, on the streets and on the internet.
Hate is a disease that makes people irrational, violent, angry, and just flat out mean. Hatred is the gateway to violence, murder and war.It comes in all forms ranging from racism to taunting and teasing. But we don’t call it hate, because our society has come up with terms to make actions and words seem a little less hateful.
For example, homophobia is not a legitimate phobia. It’s nothing more than a term coined to make it okay for people to hate other people who don’t follow the bible’s version of love between a man and a woman (It’s interesting that people say you shouldn’t believe everything you read or hear, yet people believe everything the bible says. It’s those people who are incapable of individual thought).
Bullying is not just an action, it’s a term created to disguise actions and words of pure hatred and make them seem like something a little slap on the wrist couldn’t fix.
Gays are bullied, fat people are bullied (J.K Rowling wrote “is fat really the worst thing a human being can be? Is fat worse than vindictive, jealous, shallow, vain, boring, evil or cruel?” –is it?), people with disabilities are bullied (because when we’re born we have the ability to control these things and those people choose to be born with disabilities), people of colour are bullied (it’s called racism, but apparently it doesn’t exist in our society anymore. What’s it like living in world of denial?), hell, people are bullied just because someone doesn’t like how they dress.
Let me ask you this. What difference does it make in your life, if two men or two women choose to get married? How do their actions affect anyone but themselves?
In what world do we have the right to dictate who someone should love, how someone should act and how they choose to live their life?
Why do you think people shoot up schools? Surely it’s not because they had nothing better to do on that given day.
This is what hate does.
On September 8th of this year, Christopher Howell decided that taking his own life was the only way to get away from bullying. He was bullied because he was different, because he had Tourette’s and wasn’t “normal” like other people.
He was 17.
Tyler Clementi and Seth Walsh, along with three others decided to end their lives because they were bullied for being gay.
Seth Walsh by the way was only 13.
Try and fix that. Try and hide the fact that our world is fuelled by hate.
My first instinct is to blame parents, because hate is not learned on a playground, it’s not taught in classrooms, it’s taught at home. Their first instinct is to blame music, television, and video games.
But the reality is people are hateful because they choose to be.
Believers of God often preach that you should treat others the way you want to be treated, but it’s those people who are often the ones pulling people down (sure, this is probably a generalization, but isn’t it the Catholic Church that wants gay marriage to be illegal?)
What about Miss Universe? Didn’t all 59 of them want world peace? Or was deciding who looked better in a bikini more important?
(That point leads me to ask where our priorities lie. We live in a world that is so consumed by looks and materialistic goods that it’s no wonder we are literally swimming in hate)
Instead of choosing to hate why not choose to promote peace and equality? Why not be a leader instead of a follower? Choose to make a difference, choose to stand up for what’s right, instead of doing what’s wrong.
There’s more to life than a person’s sexual orientation, the colour of their skin, their weight, their looks, their normalcy.
So here it is, I’m daring each and every one of you to take a stand, and make a difference in someone’s life. Instead of just watching someone get bullied, be the one who says “stop”.
Instead of making fun of someone, compliment them.
Instead of making someone feel like life is worthless, make them feel like life is worth living.
Make hatred a thing of the past and not a problem in the present.
Make your children’s future a place where hate is obsolete.
Instead of hate, love.
I double dog dare you.
It could save someone’s life.
It could save your life.
“Hatred paralyses life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
