Of Love and Hate

Each and every person that came into your life has a value.

Kenapa tiba-tiba tulis entry melankolia camtu? Ahahahaha. Sebab I was asked why I hate a certain person so much.

Hate is a big word. Hate is too much. I don't necessarily hate people. I am taught to forgive and forget. But it doesn't mean that I do both. It's 'either or', naturally. But saying that I hate someone is just a dramatic way to say I am annoyed.

Every person in one's life has a value. Be it just the stranger who gets into the train before you or a man who once was in your life, they all have a meaning. What we did and didn't do plays a crucial part in the whole system, in the cycle of life. Everybody comes and changes things, be it big or small. And it may not matter much when the changes are too small that you don't see. But when the changes are big enough that it resembles an elephant in the room, that is when the value of that person changes.

Let's say A is friends with B, and they are so nice to each other that B is valued at a higher place rather than anybody else. Then B did something that triggered a change - maybe small, maybe big - in the course of A's life. Hence, A changes her or his attitude, much to B's chagrin. It doesn't mean that A hates B. It just means that A has changed the value of B in his or her life. B is never much a change in A's memory. The good things about B and what B has done is still in A's mind. It's just that when the value of B changes, so is A's attitude towards B.

If that is a "Heh?" to you, let me just explain it this way. I used to have a friend who has helped me a lot in my life. A lot. I will never deny that. It doesn't matter that sometimes the friend sometimes annoy me to bits, the fact that this person was a big assistance to me in one part of my life, caused me to put all annoyance aside. But then things changed, because life is all about changes. Something the friend said was so hurtful that it prompted me to do something that ended worse than what I expected.

Not blaming anybody but myself for what I did, but remembering that what was said was too painful for me to just sweep away, I realised that the value of that friend changed. The admiration I have for the person is still there, but it's a distant memory that is right there in the same shelves as my love for Dunkin Donuts or my obsession for Jay Chou. It's not gone, but it's also not there.

When a value of someone became a distant memory, you restart everything. Restarting things means that you don't have the same value - that may include the admiration, the respect, the ability to withstand anything that makes you oblivious to the person's weaknesses. And restarting things means that all the things that you once ignore, is now there for you to see and it's rock solid. And, while once upon a time you forgive a kind of behaviour or you think the behaviour is funny, the different value you have for that person now renders it useless - that when you change the person's values, your expectation changes too.

What people don't understand is that when they did something - whether they realised it or not, or whether they atoned for it or not, nothing remains the same. You may have been forgiven or you may be not, but chances are, things changed. It's not something that the other person wanted too. It's just human nature. So if you think that once upon a time, your jokes were funny to a certain someone or what you do is considered admirable by that other person - it may not be anymore. It used to be, but that's not because the joke was funny or the things were admirable, it was funny or great because YOU were telling/doing them. When your value changes, the other person doesn't laugh or be awed anymore, and that is because YOU don't have the same value anymore.

We are all guilty of changing values in our lives. We all have done it - putting up new boundaries and restarting ourselves. But boundaries are made to remind ourselves the lesson we learned. We don't hate a particular person. They are still the same person you used to know, but it doesn't mean that the person still have that VIP seat in your life. That is all.