Words are powerful. Ask my kids about our house rules on words. It is actually a pretty long list. We do not believe in censorship, but we do believe that words are powerful and some words can have an insidious negative effect…one that you see later – like seeds that, only when they grow, do you see the full bloom.

Hate is one of those words. It is everywhere. It is so ubiquitous we don’t pay much attention to it. Except in my house. We jolt when we hear it. For us, hate is a four-letter word and something that we do not want in our lives. By definition hate is “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury / a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands action”. Even if you don’t use the word in that way, it is still being used and has that energy.

We feel that a ‘hate crime’ is a special kind of crime – it comes from an emotion – hate – that allows the better part of ourselves to be overridden. It is not the same emotion alluded to when we say “we hate vegetables”, which we may really dislike or even detest. We have laws about hate – crimes, but very little clarity about what that really means.

Does hate have a place in your home? What is that place? By watering down the word ‘hate’ we have less opportunity to really discuss what it is, and therefore, less language to combat it. It leaves no room for compassion, tolerance, mercy, forgiveness or peace.
What kind of change would you see in your surroundings if you removed the word ‘hate’ from your vocabulary? Try it and see how your view changes.

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.