Love and Hate are two sides of the same coin. Or at least that I was given to believe by the silly adolescent love stories that I indulged in as a teen. Georgette Heyer and Barbara Cartland who were the reigning queens of romance in those days were full of heroines who “hated” the hero only to fall passionately in love with them before the last chapter.

I often wonder if love and hate are really two sides of the same coin and is it possible to hate someone with as much intensity as you once loved?

There are some people in this world who hate you much more than you possibly dislike/hate them –  a feeling so deep rooted  that they don’t cross your path lest your shadow falls on them. They are curt over the phone which you just happen to  pick up when they want to speak to others in your house/office, they studiously avoid looking at you at functions which they just can’t avoid attending and judiciously avoid meeting you at functions they can avoid with excuses not to attend that are so flimsy that even a baby can see through.

Over the last fifty years, there are many such people who have come into my life and who have exited for reasons best known to them. Of course there are some obvious reasons as to why we stopped talking such as a family fight , differences between parents/siblings/children but there are many other battle lines drawn up by people who take sides. Or people who chose to misunderstand your actions and words, taking slight at the slightest of things, attributing motives that never even existed and generally assuming the mantle of “poor me” versus the “wicked you”.

These are the people I find strangest of all – those who are not actually involved in any confrontation but who choose to support what they assume to be the injured party without making any attempt at genuine arbitration or reconciliation between the warring factions. It is these people who make life even more difficult for the rest of the world who don’t know who’s talking to whom and who should be invited and or ignored.

There is no contention without a difference of opinion and sadly it is the drum which beats first that is heard first. Having got the first sound advantage, the “injured” party digs in his heels and makes sure he rallies enough support to sustain a long silence.I feel sorry for those flies on the wall who take sides because I’ve known time and again that adversaries get together and those who’ve taken sides often fall by the wayside becoming enemies of both.

History has shown that there are no real victors or losers in battle : each side wins some and loses some but the people who lose the most are those flies on the wall.

p.s. I’ve taken this picture off the net.