A great many things have come and gone, a great many things gone right and wrong. A great many things since I've been away; a great many nights, and a great many days...

Hate is hate, no matter how you say it, slice it, write it, or dress it up. Hate is hate. It is an ugly word made of four ugly letters culminating in one ugly truth. Hate is hate, and it shall always be among those who still alow its festering to affect their disgressions and affiliations accordingly. It began as any other word did: meaningless and not uttered by those who wished to partake in polite conversation with those of us who dictate our lives with care and precision, leaving out tawdry and meaningless gibberish that pertains to little one would say in a conversation with ones own mother. But what is a word if not used in conversation? One can utter curses and exhaltations to onesself all they want and never learn a thing from it other than the simple and blatant fact that they can talk and they can hear themselves. Sometimes we learn by example, and sometimes we learn through the teachings of others. But what is teaching without experience? How can we teach love or any emotion for that matter without having first experienced it? How can we tell a child not to do something we ourselves have never done. How can we tell our sons and daughters not to join the military or go to a certain school or not to affiliate with a certain group if we ourselves have never done so? How do we know something is wrong unless we ourselves experience it? Well, reader, I am not sure, but I can tell you this: hate is hate, no matter how you say it, slice it, write it, or dress it up. It is an ungly word made up of four ugly letters culminating into one ugly truth: hate is hate, and children, unless we have felt hate, we cannot possibly imagine its vastness; its persistent vigilence. Because hate is the darkness that steals the sun from the sky at night. Hate is the darkness while you sleep. Hate is the expression you exude when you relinquish the will to be courteous. And hate, my friends, is hate. And hate it will always remain, be it in our words, our actions, or our dreams, hate is hate and to hate is paint ones own picture within a frame, leaving out every detail that can prove it to be a true being capable of genuine emotion. To hate is to rub sand paper across a varnished piece of furniature. To hate is to relinquish the will to appreciate ones own inner thoughts and to allow onesself to become the thing we all fear the most: the unknown. We force ourselves into a darkness that mere words cannot describe. Hate is hate, and those four simple letters can make all the difference in the world when all the world is against you. But what no one realizes is that we each have the power to save ourselves the misery we are inflicted daily. Be it creepy flower-dwelling munchkins, Dark Jedi, the wicked witch of whatever West exists in a dream, or something inside us telling us to hate, believe that there can come change, and with it, the will to interpret our lives as we wish. No idea should go unheard; no CD left unplayed; and especially no creepy flying bat monkey left in the sky. So dream, Dorothy, dream, and you'll find your way home.

--The Diary of Flynn.