Hate is a Four Letter Word

As I looked out over the Singapore harbor, a fellow traveller, a young man from Germany, espying all the country patches on my backpack, began a friendly converstion with me. Within minutes it became clear that he had not heard the horrifying news from the United States yet. As I told him the basics, he did not believe me at first. And who would believe this -- not even in a movie plot would it be believable. He was horrified, as much of the world is.

On Tuesday night I had just sat down to use a computer in an internet cafe in Singapore, which is 12 hours ahead of the US's Eastern time zone. As I signed into Yahoo, I briefly glanced at the headlines. The headline that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center's towers caught my eye and I clicked on it to read more. News that of other plane had not yet been posted. I jumped to CNN's website and got nowhere, so I moved to ABCNews and began to read. It was dismaying, but I realized later -- as the enormity of it all began to sink in -- that I had not been able to fully grasp the horror of it at the time. And being out of the country made it seem as if it hadn't really happened.

But I grasp it now and it stirs in me an odd patriotism. I say odd because I have never believed in the refrain "my country, right or wrong," I have never thought dying for one's country made a lot of sense, and I still maintain that we should be able to burn a flag if we want to. And I am aware that my country has not always behaved in ways that are compassionate, and good, and fair. But right now, all I want to do is be home -- in America. And I feel the attack on my country as acutely as if it had been on me.

I confess that I had hate in my heart as I witnessed the television report of people gleeful in Lebanon over I am filled with an enormous sorrow for the senseless loss of life and for the loss of innocence, for now I must view all things with the potential threat

In my travels I have met both Arab and Israelis, Jews and Muslims. And the amount of hate that I heard from all sides left me with a sad, sad feeling of resignation to the certainty that as long as hate teaches the younger generation its hate, there is no hope for peace.

I have no room for hate. I don't want that ugliness near me.