Neither love nor hate,
And you will clearly understand.
Acting or reacting according to the two basic emotions of love and hate is the same as treating human beings like products in a shopping mall. It is a form of picking and choosing. You become a consumer of human beings, and your relationships turn into products that gratify your needs, and that are dumped when they have lost their usefulness, or bore you, or do not fit your new image.
Some husbands treat their wives that way. They would discard their old wife for a newer model. Emancipation to some women mean that they can now do the same to their husbands. All kinds of psychological terminology are used to explain their consumerism: "mid-life crisis", "death fear", etc. Do you want to know the truth? Ask their discarded children. They know what it really is. You are never too young to understand desertion.
The passage clearly states you should not allow love to interfere if you want to understand. This is almost impossible with close friends or family. It is more possible to love and hate them simultaneously than to neither love nor hate them. That is probably why parents have such a hard time understanding their children, and children develop such warped ideas about their parents.
This passage has often been misunderstood. It does not say you should not love. It actually shows you how. You can only truly understand your children, or your friends, or any living creature for that matter, if you do not allow such emotions as love or hate to interfere. Only if you really understand, will you truly love - and love here is seen as real support and not a cheap emotion.
Easy, isn't it? And yet so difficult.
