Love-Hate Relationship

I used to try not to use the word hate much. It was a word that carried so much weight and I felt there were few reasons to invoke this weight. There was very few things in the world I truly hated. And I used to reserve this word for those things. But I never threw that word around-I never described myself as hating someone or some place or even something like a movie. There was a lot I was indifferent to, but to truly hate something, that was a strong motivator.

The interesting thing is I did not reserve this for the word love. In fact, I thought very little of the significance of it. It was a word that, unlike hate, carried little weight in my life. Now sit back and think about that...how imbalanced that concept is. How can hate be such a loaded word and yet love is virtually meaningless. I think that explains a lot about how imbalanced I used to be, and how much just recognizing that has improved it. Not to say I've fixed everything, or anything. But I've started to identify the problems and that is almost half the battle...almost.

I've changed my line of thinking a lot. I now use the word love much more then I ever used to and I mean it. I love the man I live with. I love that I get the privilege of being in medicine, despite how much it kicks my arse. I love my job, even though there are days I hate it. (I do mean that. And I think anyone who has been a surgical resident truly understands that sentence.) I really do love a lot of the people I work with. On some level they have made me so much more successful then I could have ever imagined. And it's not something I've done alone. We together have made me a successful resident.

But in my life I have so much more love then I ev

er have. At home. At work. I've tipped the scales and it feels so good. But I think the bottom line is I have so much more self-love. And that has made a world of difference in every aspect of my life. It has allowed me to embrace the love around me and make me indifferent to the hate.