One of the more interesting aspects of life is that we tend to become like what we love, and also tend to become what we hate. We might think that what we love and what we hate are diametrically opposite to each other, but what we love and what we viscerally hate both resonate strongly with us for a reason, and those reasons are not often straightforward. We might say, at least in general, that what we love is what resonates with us that we acknowledge and accept and revel in, and what we viscerally and intensely hate is what resonates with us that we do not acknowledge or accept, nor want to admit.

What we neither love nor hate is not something that resonates with us. Our attitude towards that which does not resonate with us can be as important as our attitude towards that which does resonate with us. We can modestly enjoy things, prefer some things to others but not feel strongly about them either way, or recognize why it is that someone else may relate to them even if we do not. These are healthy attitudes to have. Less healthy attitudes are to think badly about people because different things resonate with them than with us, and only like those people who respond to things more or less exactly as we do. There are a lot of things to enjoy and appreciate, and plenty of people with different tastes and backgrounds and experiences that allow them to relate to things that we cannot, and vice versa.

When we create anything, other people respond to it based on who they are. Aspects of what we create can resonate intensely with other people not necessarily because of our own skill at creating well, but rather because something that we create hits someone in just the right spot. Those who create works that are complex enough to hit people in a lot of potential places have the best possible chance to create works that resonate with a lot of people for different reasons, and resonate the most with people whose complex nature is most similar to the artist. That which brings an intense reaction from us does so for a reason, and those reasons are worth exploring, whether we feel positively or negatively about them. As someone who has spent a lot of time reviewing the works of others, I find that the most enjoyable reviews to write are those where I feel either intensely positively or intensely negatively about the work, because there my creative energies are most engaged. The great mass of works that one encounters one does not feel strongly about either way, and so one has less vibrant things to say, less interesting and engaging observations to make.

When we perform and when we create, we are revealing aspects of ourselves. How much other people are aware of what we reveal varies widely depending on how insightful people are. What we are often not aware of is that our responses to what other people create and how other people perform also reveals aspects of ourselves. We may think that we are seeing something in something else, but when we respond to what we interact with, we are revealing something in ourselves that other people can understand us by more than we are actually revealing something about what we are writing or speaking about. It is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks, and that we will be judged for every idle word we say (for some of us, that amounts to many, many words for which we will be held accountable). One of the reasons this presents such a difficulty for us is that we think we are talking about that which is outside us when how we see that which is outside of us depends very greatly on that which is inside of us, and we often unintentionally reveal our mental filters and thought processes and prejudices and gaps of vision and insight and recognition (to say nothing of cognition) when we critique or praise others and their works.