The following blog, like many others of mine, deserves a disclaimer. My opinions can get so radical sometimes that the average person would just blow it off as stupid drivel. Although it could very well be that, my opinions are original and they are OPINIONS, so there’s no sense in proving them wrong.
I was talking to my friend Hannah today, and we got to the topic of love and hate. Hannah says that “love makes you feel not so infinitely small,” and I agree with her. But the thing is, I can’t confirm that from first-hand experience.
Of course I care for my friends and family. I care so very much. But is that really love? Is that really devoting one’s life to another? Do I, or have I, really ever felt love?
This can also go the opposite way. I don’t think I’ve ever felt hate for anything – hate being an emotion so strong that I’d devote my life to the destruction of another. Fortunately, hate isn’t a very widely felt emotion these days.
What is it I feel instead? I think the proper term is “care.” That’s about in the middle of hate and love. In both hate in love, you care about what you’re doing to the other person. Yes, you care, in a way, even about the person you hate. If you just brushed them off and completely ignored them, you wouldn’t really hate them.
I can most easily express a lot of my feelings, or lack of them, with a common example: the attacks of September 11 of last year. What did I feel when I first saw the attacks? Not sadness, not happiness. Not hate, not love. Not even caring. All I really felt was excitement from all the following hype. (Just so you don’t kill me over lack of sympathy: another online friend of mine was practically rejected from his drama class because he stated that he “would have done the same thing if he was in bin Laden’s shoes”.)
My drama class definitely wanted to act because of 9/11, though. They believed the administration gave almost no notice to the attacks. So they put on a Memorial Project, where they would share their feelings and thoughts about 9/11 and make a play, or a series of skits, about it. Both presentations (there are two drama classes) turned out beautifully. But before we even started in on talking about the attacks, we went around the room, asking if everyone was comfortable with the project. Everyone said they were, except for me.
Why did I decline to do the project? Well, I seemed to be the only one who showed a lack of emotion. I couldn’t really put my thoughts and feelings in, because I didn’t think much about it. My view on human nature had been so simplified to a point that it almost seemed natural. The religious extremism, the loss of life, the outpour of patriotism, the following war… human nature. I wasn’t surprised, happy, sad, angry, hateful, or loving one bit. I decided to keep my mouth shut (although I didn’t have much to say) and make the backdrop for the project, which ended up measuring 16’x8′. People appreciated my effort and were moved by the imagery, but all it was was another art project to me. Another MIDI, another comic. I cared about it just as much, and just as little.
So that’s my weird state of emotions. What persuaded me to write all this? No emotion, that’s for sure. I just feel pensive, that’s all. Hope you understand what I mean.