I often write with a lot of black and white language, and part of that is wording choices I deliberately make. Saying something looks like ‘shit’, that I ‘hate’ it, or that I ‘don’t like it’. Those word choices leave little room for doubt about my meaning, and in most cases I stand behind my choice in those words looking back at them now.
But there are a few instances which I’ve been thinking a lot about my wording choices on. For instance, I used to say that I disliked, or even hated, coffee — until I realized that this isn’t the case. I actually just don’t enjoy coffee. And as I’ve wound down this introspective road, I’ve found that many things I’ve labeled as something I dislike or hate are really better categorized as something I just don’t enjoy.
Except Google and Facebook, hate is spot on analysis there.
What has become apparent to me is that there are two ways of looking at something that strikes me as something which I do not like. I can look at it and decide that I do not like it for explainable reasons. The typography is bad, the colors are hideous, etc. There is also another kind of dislike, and that is more of a personal preference, perhaps it is something that I don’t want to use, but there is not one reason I can truly state as to why.
In those cases, it seems the best explanation of what is happening is that I in fact just do not enjoy that thing, rather than disliking it. To many far more well adjusted people, this will be obvious, and in hindsight this should be obvious, but I think it is too easy to just say that you don’t like something rather than stopping and thinking about it.
So no, I don’t hate coffee, or even dislike it, I just get no enjoyment out of coffee.