My wife, my love, my dreams

A little of exploration through the dichotomy of love and hate

ON THE OCCASION OF MY WIFE’S BIRTHDAY, falling this June 26th, I find it suitable to reflect a little about the concept of love. Lyubov, known affectionately as Luba, personifies her name's meaning – love in Ukrainian. As I celebrate her, even in distance, I invite you to explore the dichotomy of love and hate and how they shape our perspectives.

Luba, a strong woman of few words and a lot of attitude, is the kind of person who expresses her thoughts through her eyes, reflecting her soul's depth and sensibility. Only those who accept the challenge of reading her soul through the air that she breathes and not the words she says, are awarded with the keys of her heart. It's impossible to estimate how much I miss and love my partner of life.

In a world filled with conflicts, understanding the power of love as well as the traps of hate becomes important for building a more compassionate and united society.

But what really is love? Maybe it would help start talking about hate, negative feeling that sometimes seems to dominate the world. Hate is a primal emotion that requires no contemplation, making it easy to succumb to. It seems to be closely related to some of our brain's connections because we don't need to ponder or evaluate anything to hate something or someone, it's easy. It's probably easier than most other feelings, one of the reasons it has been widely explored by governments of authoritarian cut along history.

Hate breeds irrationality and blinds us from reason and analysis. When we hate, we become susceptible to manipulation and prejudice, which can lead to a cycle of never-ending animosity. That's why I never intended to foster your hate, my fellow reader. I'm not on social media to increase my follower count or influence. Soon I realized that hate, danger and fear have much more engagement than talking about more sophisticated and constructive elements of our human features. 

Even though I really appreciate the international support to Ukraine, this contest for audience has little or no effect on the war itself or to the future of this nation. Far from judging someone, I'm personally worried about conducting the debate in terms of rationality, building self-awareness and fostering virtuous qualities inside us. Soon this war will be over and what will we have built in the end? What will we carry inside us after this war? 

This circumstance of war is temporary, however, our souls will remain for much longer. My soul in Ukraine and your soul wherever you are reading these words now. 

By crushing hate and exercising empathy, we open ourselves to opportunities of growth and understanding, leading to a more successful world by every measure. Unlike hate, love is not easy to cultivate. It demands leaving our comfort zones, challenging our internal truths, and showing respect and understanding towards others. Love, in this broader sense, is about making everyone feel respected and valued.

It's easy to hate Russians and Russia. I'm certainly engulfed in those thoughts and have all the reasons for it. But we need to go further if we want to build something really meaningful. While acknowledging their responsibility for the invasion and the crimes, the key seems to lie in not letting hate dictate our actions. Instead, we must concentrate on building a new and prosperous future for our communities.

Morally, they are already completely defeated by themselves and expecting only their military collapse, so how they will deal with the consequences is something only of their problem. The moral defeat of others does not exempt us from our task to create an honorable world. Our concern is to stay focused, get the final victory, and plan the new Ukraine we will build in the next years.

Please note, I'm not defending anyone to turn hate from Russia into love. In any sense, broad or romantic. I'm talking only about avoiding letting hate towards them dominate our spirits. It is not fair that any feeling generated by Russian actions gains dimension enough to curb the compassion we need to bridge divides and build a more balanced and harmonious society.

I hope that Luba apologizes me for borrowing her birthday date and the romantic love I feel for her to talk a little about love in this more expansive perception, the one that connects you, my reader, and me, while members of the same civilization. Or at least may potentially connect us to the point of leaving hate aside and thus promote a more adequate environment in our neighborhoods, in our cities, in our countries, in our planet. 

By choosing love over hate, we can build a future where respect, understanding, and kindness prevail, inaugurating a world that is not only generous for ourselves but for generations to come.