Nathalie+H’s+Final+AmEx+2015+Speech

When you hear the words hate and love, what are your definitions for them? Are they the same definitions as that of like or dislike? Or are they stronger, more personal? If so why do we as a society use these two words to describe things that would only need the words “like” or “dislike” to describe them? Love and hate are the most common words one hears when describing something. ”Oh I love this or I hate that.” These two words are used to describe intense feelings towards someone or something. And yet I feel as though these words have lost their meaning in our society. In many other cultures there are words reserved for showing affection and/or deep admiration towards someone, or loathing of something. For example, in the Spanish language the phrase “Te amo”, meaning I love you, is rarely used as it is reserved for only your significant other. While “Te quiero”, which also means I love you is more common as it is used for friends, family and other people. Even though they mean the same thing, “te amo” holds a deeper meaning as well as connotation than that of “te quiero.”
 * Love and Hate: Lost Meanings? **

Yet in our culture love is used to mean anything that might make you even the slightest bit happy. As hate also now encompasses anything mildly displeasing when it actually means that you feel extreme hostility and displeasure towards that person or object. What I mean to say is when someone says, “ oh I hate this color or I hate, lets say for instance, cheese, are you going to feel extreme hostility towards that piece of cheese? No! The idea of causing a piece of cheese harm is absurd. But disliking cheese for its taste, texture, what have you makes sense as it states your displeasure.

“I hate my brother”

I hate him because of all the things that he does to annoy me. As siblings it is, for some reason, known to everyone that siblings are meant to hate each other. Is it because they poke you all the time, use you as an armrest, or just literally get in your face stopping you from doing your work? These actions are known to annoy but they are in fact, wait for it, a way for them to show they care. So when I say or you say “I hate my brother” is it really hate you are feeling at that moment? If you were to hate your brother that would mean that you would hate him 24/7 but that is not the case. The only thing you/I would dislike about our brothers are their actions at that moment in time. So why do we use such a strong word on them?

Love is the most commonly abused word in American culture as it no longer stands for just a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person as defined by the dictionary, but a word that describes a like or desire. I searched everywhere for this type of definition, in the dictionary and yes also urban dictionary for a definition of love that was a like or a desire yet it was never found. As a culture we have this definition for the word love being passionate affection yet the connotation and usage of the word has changed it to become a common word used for everything from your significant other to something trivial. I believe that is due to this idea that in order to have opinions on anything on must have an intense feeling towards it for their opinion to be accepted. Now whether that opinion is serious or trivial is another matter, but that idea is what causes us to change something that would have been a “like” or “dislike” to a “love” or “hate”. This idea of always showing intense emotions/ opinions is what brought us to muddy these intense influential words. What should be used on special occasions is now used to describe normal everyday activities causing the word’s connotation, not definition, to become weaker and less believable.

Dictionary.com  This year has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for everyone. It could be calm but then we see our work piling up until it hits the time of due dates making us rush downhill in to stress. But I do feel that the year wasn’t all that scary as previous years made it out to be. Yeah it was hard at times but it wasn’t anything that you couldn’t do. I found that listening to Mr. Fitz’s lectures were amazing and that recording them helped out a lot on tests or just to listen to. But the one thing I didn’t like was the fact that we rushed too much at the end. I know that it couldn’t be helped because we were scheduled for the first week of AP testing but that extra week would have allowed me to enjoy three more hours of lecture or *cough* *cough* gotten more time to study. But in the long run those beginning days when everyone was scared of the class and everyone was contemplating on whether or not to drop out, I am glad I stayed as this was the most fun I have had in a while in class and the people in it. This was the year where I finally started to interact with people more that what was required of me. I realized that everyone is so nice and I told myself to just speak with anyone and it would be fine. With AMEX I found out that I like to socialize but I’m content either way. This experience was and an amazing one. It was the AMEX experience.
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