While it is not necessary that everyone who chooses love over hate will have an Oscar moment, the import of what A R Rahman stated in his acceptance speech at the Oscars recently is one that perhaps merits a few minutes of reflection: "All my life I have had the choice between love and hate, and i have chosen love... And i'm here."
Throughout our lives, we are faced with choices and these include love and hate. The choice that lasts is not always what we understand to be love, for what we initially take to be love can end in acrimony, bitterness, regret, and even hatred. Strange as it might seem, we do sometimes manage to find hate even in what we believe to be love, as if there were a deficit of hate, fear, anger and pain in the course of the daily struggle for existence.
When Rahman spontaneously says that he has chosen love over hate, it sounds simplistic. Perhaps choosing love over hate is something that only someone like Rahman - immersed as he is in making music ^ can do, as his is a more philosophical and spiritual vocation than what most of us are engaged in doing as part of our working lives. Maybe we could at least choose not hating over hating?
However, the choice often doesn't seem to be a choice at all. Often we don't really choose to be angry, hurtful, resentful, or hateful. We tend to get consumed by these emotions despite ourselves. We seem to be, as former president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan says in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, "...helpless tools of nature". American psychologist David Seabury, however, thought that nature still gave us the final choice. He says: "Nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow." Exercising that power consciously can, apart from the purely philosophical point of love being greater than hate, perhaps add a few years to, and reduce a few tears from, our worldly existence.
The absence of hatred is not, however, an indication of a passive existence. It is in many ways the antithesis of it. "Krishna advises Arjuna to fight without passion or ill-will, without anger or attachment... We must fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that ensures our spiritual defeat," says Radhakrishnan.
The popular poster with the title `Anyways' sold on pavements starts with the line, "People are illogical, unreasonable and self-centred. Love them anyway." It ends with these words: "Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway." Maybe when you begin with loving people anyway, putting your hurt and anger and angst aside, that is when you are able to give the world the best you have. Looking at Rahman talking about choosing love over hate on a platform where he stood because he's been able to give the world the best he has, all this does make some sense, doesn't it?
Perhaps we can't always choose love when our reflex is to hate. But we can at least choose not to hate; we can try to be forgiving, to be compassionate. We may not have the arc lights on us and a televised audience, but perhaps, when our time is up, we can look back and say to ourselves: `I could choose between love and hate, and i chose not to hate.'