But my friend's killer was so cold about it, so matter-of-fact about what he'd done.  So selfishly wrapped up in his own petty problems that he had no inkling of empathy for the life he ended and the dozens of lives he turned upside down that day.  His action made me hate him.  I fantasized about killing him, preferably with my bare hands.  And watching her family torment itself with the same horrific feelings only intensified my hate for the killer and what he'd done to so many people.

So I indulged in murderous fantasies -- maybe not so different than what the killer thought about.  I listened to loud, angry music.  I talked to friends and family about how brutal I felt.  And eventually, slowly, the anger subsided.  I still don't like the guy, or forgive him, but at least I don't think about him much anymore.  Somehow I managed to dispell most of the hate.

At the killer's trial, the defense paraded witnesses in front of the jury to show them his miserable upbringing.  He was raised by miserable, hateful, mean-spirited people.  He was treated like dirt.  They didn't even bother showing up at his trial.  I didn't have much sympathy -- none of that history excused what he did.  But it was informative at least: now I knew where his hate had come from.  His relatives had a reservoir of it, and passed it on to him.  Unlike me, he didn't have any way to slowly leak it off -- he just let it build up, and expelled it in one huge explosion, killing my friend and soaking all of her friends and family with gallons of the vicious substance.

I came to think of hate as a fluid.   It can build up or subside; it can flow from one person to another, and it can burst open like a dam, flow out like a firehose, or be carefully drained off like a safety valve.  But it can't be magically wished away.

In the wake of the Columbine High School massacre, some people are preaching against "hate", saying it's a bad emotion we should dispense with.  I believe that's unrealistic.  Those kids had a reservoir of hate, and that would have been a very difficult thing to change.  They were listening to angry music, playing angry violent video games, watching angry violent movies.   Those all could have been elements of a healthy strategy of draining off their hate.  But it apparently wasn't enough -- they were inexpert, immature managers of their own emotions, and ended up causing a horrific explosion.

Now the whole of Denver, if not the whole nation, has been soaked.  We hate the killers, or the media, or the NRA, or the gun control lobby, or the parents, or the kids who made fun of the killers.  That's unfortunate, but unavoidable.  Now it's our job to safely siphon it off.  Now we should take a cue from gansta rappers, slamdancers, and game programmers -- let's sing, dance, and play our hate out instead of taking it out on each other with mistrust, censorship and respressive security measures.