I love people…

Just for the record, I wrote this last Saturday… over a week ago:

“I hate people.”

It’s a phrase one might hear me say quite often. I assure you it’s easily misconstrued, but I nevertheless express my thoughts with this simple sentence. I suppose I wouldn’t use it as liberally if people didn’t give me so much reason to think it.

My faith in the human race has a habit of diminishing and then expanding. It is never held in disregard, but rather this constant and conscious fluctuation between the loveable and the hate-able. Life is experienced through various observations, and it is in these observations that one can become carried away in finding one action deplorable, thus hating people, only to turn around and see another action that renews all faith in humans and goodness. In one hour of time, a terrorist might crash four planes into three buildings. The next hour, common people may rush to sort through the debris, overcoming fears in order to help fellow man; an entire nation may race to donate blood. The observer is left to two options: hating people, or loving people.

Perhaps what people struggle to understand is why I do not finish by saying “I love people.” They forget that simple words do not necessarily dictate belief, while actions are, as the cliché goes, louder than words. I may claim hatred, and there is a fraction of reality in that, but I, as a Christian, sister, and friend, am more inclined to love.

Cynics like myself tend to mock the petty things in life, and to some extent those that dwell on them. But for every fake person we unfairly judge, dozens of actions of love occur. For every beyond annoying classmate, driver, friend, enemy, or teacher that influences me to declare hatred, I am forced to think of my dearest friends, my sister, those heroes of America, who all make me love people more than I could ever put into words.