I went out to lunch with a friend a few weeks ago. We often talk about a range of topics. Toward the end, we drifted into one we both knew we should avoid. It got heated and maybe a little personal. Then we had to leave.
Before we walked out, my friend gave me a hug and said, “I love you, man.”
Here is a definition of love and hate I learned from Rav Noach Weinberg. A person has many traits, some good and some bad. Love is identifying the person with his good traits. Hate is identifying him with his bad traits. The whole person is there either way. What changes is which part you treat as the real him.
Most of us think of hate as the strong version. The person we cannot stand. But the same thing happens at lower levels. The coworker you find annoying. The relative whose call you let go to voicemail. You have taken something small about the person and let it stand for who he is. Same identification, just quieter.
Misplaced hate usually starts with a real offense. Someone wrongs you and it hurts. The Ramchal, in his classic book, The Path of the Upright, describes what our negative inclination does next. It will not let the offense go. It keeps the wrong stuck to the person, so whenever you think of him, you think of what he did or said.
The offense becomes his label. It can sit quietly inside someone who thinks he is over the whole thing.
If the negative inclination cannot get you to hate openly, it settles for less. Give him what he needs, but not nicely. Help him, but not where he can see. Forgive him, but do not be his good friend again. Each of these feels reasonable. Each one keeps the offense stuck to him.
The Torah gives one command. Love your fellow as yourself. The Ramchal presses on those two words, as yourself. As yourself, with no difference. Nothing held back.
You know your own failures, but you do not treat them as who you are. You are the whole person, and you love that whole person. Love your fellow as yourself means the same for him. Do not stick him to his worst moment. See the whole person, the way you see yourself.
The offense still matters. It just does not get to be who he is.
That is how love replaces misplaced hate. Not just by being nicer. By refusing to let the offense stand for him, and seeing the whole person instead.
That is what my friend did at the end of lunch. The argument was real and a little personal. He did not pretend it wasn’t. He just did not let it become the label. The hug was love your fellow as yourself.
