The thin line

Back over on his blog Chicken Fat, my friend Eddie said something to me that was an epiphany. "There is only a thin line between hate and love," he wrote. Upon reading his nugget of wisdom (not an unfamiliar one, but still good to hear again) a lightbulb brightened in my cobwebby head. Suddenly, something in my life made sense.

Some months ago, when a friend of my former blog nemesis (or at least she was my nemesis in my mind, anyway) left several nasty (but gut-bustingly entertaining, at least to me) comments on CUSS, she demanded to know how someone could be both a humanist and a misanthrope. She wrote:

On another note, I read your description of yourself: a do-gooder whom loathes people. Sounds like you may benefit from some medication. I'm not being ugly, either. I have a bipolar father whom has benefited greatly from Prozac. You really need to lift that dark cloud that's enveloped you.

Several delightful people jumped to my defense, and it seems that anyone who works in public service knows exactly what I meant by that. My own explanation was something along the lines of understanding that there are a lot of good people out there and wanting to make the world a better place, and yet the miserable idiots that I am forced to encounter each day (such as the anonymous commenter) causse me to loathe the overall sea of (in)humanity.

I think, however, that Eddie's expression explains it perfectly.